The Conflict Management Styles, Strength Of Conflict Management Self-Efficacy, And Moral Development Levels Of School Counselors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the conflict management styles, strength of conflict management self-efficacy, and moral development levels of school counselors.

Eighty school counselors from a large public school system in a southeastern state participated in this study. The instruments administered were the Thomas-Kilmann Management of Differences Exercise Instrument (Thomas & Kilmann, 1974), which assessed conflict management styles; Conflict Management Self-efficacy Scale, which measured conflict management self-efficacy; and the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1976), which examined moral development levels. In this descriptive study, percentages, means, standard deviations, and rankings were used to analyze the data.

The results indicated that school counselors have different conflict management style preferences from those of the reference group comprised of business and government managers. In addition, counselors' preferences differed based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of school counseling experience, hours of conflict resolution/management training, grade level of school, and location of school. School counselors had well above average conflict management self-efficacy scores with no real difference in scores across any of the aforementioned categories. The average moral development level of the counselors were high; however, there was quite a bit of variance across P-scores indicating levels of moral development ranging from comparisons to institutionalized adolescents to doctoral students.

This study provided implications for practicing school counselors, local schools, public school systems, and counselor education preparation programs. Recommendations for further research were also provided.