Dialogic mediation in conflict resolution education

Over the last two decades, children’s harassment has become one of the main concerns in schools. It is generally treated as bullying and attributed to psychological characteristics or socialisation processes of some children. Less attention has been dedicated to the ways in which harassment is managed in classrooms interaction, through negotiation processes among children. This essay tries to understand the production of harassment as a form of conflict management, and the ways in which alternative conflict management can be productive in the interaction among children. For this purpose, the results of field research in Italy are presented: they concern videotaped interaction in classrooms coordinated by experts trying to support children in managing their conflicts. The data show the ways in which adults are able to promote children’s participation in conflict management through reflection and mediation, and the problems and the limitations of their action, which reside in the main normative and cognitive expectations established in classrooms. These results highlight the coordination of children’s agency and adults’ intervention in managing conflicts.