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This article concerns what have been variously called mild misbehaviours, minor distractions or emerging conflicts, i.e. situations of mild tension between the teacher and pupils in the classroom. The article responds to calls for further studies on the link between how teachers understand these emerging conflicts and the strategies they suggest to handle them. We carried out two studies on primary school teachers in Sweden, using a qualitatively driven mixed-method design, i.e. the studies were carried out sequentially using different qualitative methods. The first study, the main study, based on individual interviews with 20 teachers, used a phenomenographic approach, capturing these teachers' different understandings of emerging conflict. The second study, the supplemental study, based on six group interviews with 18 teachers, built on the main study and used a hermeneutic approach, capturing how these teachers link a certain understanding of emerging conflicts to certain themes of suggested strategies. By utilizing this design, we were able to investigate the aforementioned link and build a model of nine different understandings, each linked to one to four strategy themes. Altogether, 22 different strategy themes, together encompassing a multitude of separate strategies, were recognized and linked to the nine different understandings. The results suggest that teachers have a more divergent and nuanced understanding of emerging conflicts, and how to handle them, than earlier studies of this link have reported. The results give valuable insights into developing more accurate quantitative surveys as well as more suitable teacher training programmes.

The numbers of publications within the field of research on approaches to address conflicts in schools is rapidly growing, and it is now important to map influential theories, methods and topics that shape this research field. In addition, student teachers, teachers and teacher educators would benefit from it being easier to find research-based knowledge of how to address conflicts in schools. Therefore, a bibliometric study was carried out on 1126 publications that were published between 1996 and 2019 in this field. The study aimed at examining publication activity, geographic spread, and dominant research topics. The findings showed a positive trend in publication output from 2006 onwards. Research output was found to be dominated by the United States. However, the results also indicated an internationalization trend expressed in an increased geographic spread of publication output. Furthermore, six research topics were identified through cluster analyses and labelled ‘peace and value education’, ‘classroom management from coercive discipline to relationship building’, ‘constructive conflict resolution’, ‘classroom management programmes’, ‘restorative justices and restorative approaches’, and ‘classroom challenges for teachers’. Within each research topic, a distinct number of publications were found that defined the core research.

Scholars in the field of conflict resolution in schools theoretically argued that minor distractions and disturbances are conflicts. In the present study, we refer to them as emerging conflicts. The study has been carried out within the phenomenographic research tradition and used semi-structured interviews. We addressed the professionals – the teachers – who deal with emerging conflicts every day, investigating their different ways of understanding an emerging conflict. The 9 different ways we found make the collective and shared understandings of emerging conflicts visible and form a professional language with which to discuss these kinds of conflicts. These nine could be divided into three groups, the social practice of the classroom, something that stems from outside the classroom, and something that characterises all human interaction. The awareness of the existing understandings could further be discussed in relation to what is actually taught in teacher education in Sweden.

Increasing numbers of student teachers, teachers, and teacher educators require training in research‐based knowledge about how to address conflicts in schools. There are also increasing numbers of relevant publications, and hence, a perceived need to map influential theories, methods, and topics that shaped the field of research. To meet this need, a bibliometric study was conducted. The reviewed literature, 608 publications referring to studies by 197 influential authors, was subdivided into two periods: 1996–2010 and 2011–2015. The intellectual structure was examined by author co‐citation analysis. The findings indicate seven clusters of authors from period one and four from period two.

To support teachers, teacher educators, student teachers and scholars in their navigation in the growing research field of school-based conflict and conflict resolution, a longitudinal bibliometric review was conducted. This study aimed at providing an overview of publication activity and central themes, 1996-2015. The dataset, consisting of 608 publications, was clustered on the basis of bibliographic coupling into nine clusters representing different themes. While the themes “educational leadership: management and discipline styles”, “constructive conflict resolution” and “behaviour management” were found over the whole period, others appeared 2004/5, among others "peace education and restorative approaches". Finding nine clusters strengthen the common view in this field that conflict is a multifaceted concept and can be approached from many different angles.

In this article, we discuss the views of 117 special education student teachers related to their oncoming profession in the framework of ecological theory. Together, 68 students from Sweden (26 special teachers and 41 SENCo students) and 49 from Finland responded to a questionnaire. We compared the respondents’ thoughts about their future work content, the focus areas of special education and inclusion. According to the expectations, the main task for these future special educators is to work with pupils and adults at school. The focus areas of their future work included co-operation and consultation, more so in Sweden. In addition, excellent interaction skills were central. The Swedish respondents supported full inclusion to a greater extent than the Finnish respondents. Finally, no critical aspects of resource allocation or conditions to ensure the child’s right to adequate support within the existing school systems were emphasised by the respondents. The results and the differences among the various respondents are discussed.

This dissertation explores ten teachers' approaches to managing conflicts with/between pupils. The relevance of gender is analysed according to the strategies and representations chosen by the teachers. The methods used for data collection include 'rounds', role-plays and ongoing reflexivity, mainly in single-sex groups. Three main strategies were identified in managing conflicts with/between pupils: challenging, confirming and physically touching. The strategy of challenging reveals that teachers have high expectations of how competent pupils ought to be. It is no longer enough to be competent and independent as a pupil (in Sweden); he or she is also expected to have an integrated ethic of caring. Values such as an ethic of caring are conventionally associated with femininity, and are usually invisible and/or low status; though they have now become the dominant norm for both female and male teachers. The strategy of confirming is used to give support to the pupil but there is a risk of confirming one individual "too much" which can lead to relational problems with other pupils. Physical touching as a strategy relates to dilemmas arising from gendered expectations of physicality in teacher-pupil interaction. Overall, difficulties were found in getting male teachers to discuss and 'role-play' conflicts with girls, which did not arise with female teachers concerning conflicts with boys. Also criticized were the demands on teachers' workloads as a result of their social responsibility for pupils' welfare, and also lack of institutional support. When the teachers had time to reflect together on their experiences, they seemed willing to criticize norms and representations. Four phases in the mode of talking were identified: (1) the telling of an experience; (2) interpretation of experience as a form of difference, either as deviance or according to gender; (3) narration of experience that contradicts the above dichotomy of difference; and (4) ongoing reflexivity resulting in motivation to change strategy or strengthen former strategies based on a wider awareness of work context.

This article explores the concept of mobbning, which is mainly used in school settings, and involves repeated bullying of one child by another, from a Swedish perspective. Mobbning has been given much attention in the media during the 1990s and is mentioned in the school regulations of 1994. A special interest has been in what might be termed ‘anti-democratic’ acts and processes in schools. It is argued in the paper that the phenomena of mobbning is more talked about than occuring in reality. The paper explores what we mean when we label something mobbning. This study is based on teacher´s descriptions of situations in schools when mobbning has occurred.