Traditional administrative approaches to conflict in schools tend to be punitive, dominated by Western cultural assumptions, and to disregard students’ cultures. Cultural responsiveness attends to different worldviews while appreciating the impact of one’s own cultural lens. This thesis applies a cultural proficiency framework to analysis of the conflict management practices of administrators in secondary schools in a south-central Ontario school board. Analysis of data from interviews with secondary school administrators, students, school board cultural community liaisons, and school board documents indicate that culturally proficient cross-cultural interactions between administrators and students tended to include relationship-building efforts aimed at learning from and about disputants. In contrast to typical punitive and uncommunicative approaches, cultural proficiency was evident in some elements of alternative participatory or restorative approaches. In combining cultural proficiency with conflict management, this thesis helps to fill a gap in research relevant to equitably serving diverse student populations in southern Ontario schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/29490 |
| Date | 11 August 2011 |
| Creators | Walker, Rosemarie |
| Contributors | Bickmore, Kathy |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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