This four-day unit is designed for use in social studies (including psychology and sociology) and/or literature classes at secondary (7-12) and community college levels as a general introduction to conflict on personal, group, and world levels. (The unit may easily be adapted to the upper elementary level.)

The unit introduces students to and familiarizes them with the characteristics and mechanisms of conflicts at all levels and with the basic conflict resolution/management alternatives. Students define conflict, divide it into separate elements, and apply these elements to conflict analysis on all levels. As a result, students understand conflicts as phenomena with causes, consequences, and different possible outcomes, and not as isolated events that should necessarily be either avoided or sought. They also discuss controversial issues such as the morality of conflict and whether a link exists between personal and international conflict behavior and its resolution.

The overall purpose of these activities is to develop students' analytic and critical skills regarding conflict, which is a pervasive part of both personal life and international relations.

Unit Goals

In exploring the anatomy of conflict, students will:

• analyze examples of conflicts and recognize ways in which they are similar and different

• recognize that different people can see the same situation as either conflictual or non-conflictual

• recognize that conflict is a common characteristic of human experience

• explore their feelings about conflict

• develop definitions of conflict

• learn that conflict is composed of different elements and components

• recognize that a conflict can have positive as well as negative consequences and that these outcomes can determine whether a conflict is constructive or destructive

• learn that there are many responses to conflict, and these responses can lead to the resolution or escalation of some components of the conflict, to the creation of new conflicts, or to no change in the original conflict

• understand that conflict is a complex force