Approaches to Conflict Management in Peace Clubs in Public Secondary Schools within Kisumu County, Kenya

Abstract

Globally, occurrence of secondary school student unrest has been on the rise since19^th C. The situation has not been any different in Kenya where secondary schools have experienced increasingly high levels of student unrest. This has prompted the government to introduce Peace Clubs in Kenyan schools. The thesis of this study, therefore, was that despite these efforts, many schools in Kenya still experience student unrest hence the need to evaluate the approaches to conflict management in peace clubs in public secondary schools. The study used a conceptual framework informed by contingency theory and integrative negotiations and peer mediation theory. The study applied evaluation research design. The researcher used focus group discussion, interviews and questionnaires to collect primary data while review of publications and reports was done to obtain secondary data. The study found out that competition is the most commonly applied approach to conflict management in Peace Clubs in schools followed by collaboration and accommodation in that order while compromising and avoidance are the least applied approaches to conflict management in Peace Clubs. It was concluded that Peace Clubs mostly apply competition approach to conflict management in schools. In competition, the losing party bears grudge hence the occurrence of student unrest witnessed in the Kenyan schools. It was recommended that schools should focus on exposing students to various Peace Club activities with the purpose of giving learners the capacity to grow varying and less assertive approaches to conflict management such as collaboration, compromising, avoidance.