Methods of Conflict Study in the System of Education
The article raises the problem of developing methods for studying conflicts in the education system. The definition of conflict is given as a process that actualises violations by the subjects of interaction of established norms, rules, laws, requirements of a particular social environment. It is emphasised that today there are two main methodological approaches to the study of conflicts: activity-oriented and personality- oriented. The activity-oriented paradigm considers conflicts from the point of view of activity and development of the subjects of interaction and social environment. The personality-oriented approach focuses on the importance of personal characteristics of the interacting parties to resolve a conflict situation. The authors propose a comprehensive approach based on the symbiosis of personality-oriented and activity-oriented paradigms, which allows to take into account the main personal factors of subjects in the process of deployment and resolution of conflicts at each stage of a conflict situation: characterological peculiarities, self-esteem and intelligence, as well as behaviour strategies. An empirical pilot study was conducted among students of Siberian Federal University in order to determine leading personality features of an individual, which occupy the central place in a conflict, regardless of its stage and determine their relationship with the level of proneness to conflicts of a person.The data obtained allowed us to come to preliminary conclusions that a low level of proneness to conflicts is associated with such qualities as high intelligence, ability to think outside the box, emotional stability, self-confidence and awareness of one's own capabilities. A high level of proneness to conflicts is due to the student's inability or unwillingness to understand and accept the individuality of other people, inability to forgive others for their mistakes, low intelligence, emotional instability and anxiety. The revealed relationships confirmed the effectiveness of using an integrated approach to the study of conflicts, as well as the theoretical assumption of the mutual influence of individual psychological characteristics and the level of proneness to conflicts of a person. The results of the study will allow us to investigate the mechanisms of conflict behaviour of learners, taking into account their individual psychological characteristics at each stage of the development of a conflict situation, and therefore manage conflicts in the education system.