Eureka! Institutional Repository

The phenomenon of conflicts seems to be observed more and more often in schools and as a result it makes crucial the finding of effective ways to handle them in order to maintain a positive and healthy work environment. This paper researches the incident of conflicts, the reasons why it occurs and the implications of it either positive or negative. In order to deal with the conflicts at school this paper examines the multiple techniques of handling them, in which case is each one more appropriate to apply and the factors that leads teachers to apply a particular one. It also studies the multidimensional role of school's principals, his skills of communication and the reasons that render his behavior and his attitude highly important to preserve the smooth operation of the school union. This paper used a quantitative research and more specific a questionnaire to obtain the data. The data sample consists of 161 teachers of Primary and Secondary Education, that works at school unions all over Greece. The results of the research indicated that teachers view conflicts as an incident that causes mostly negative rather than positive aftermaths in schools and that teachers mainly embrace the techniques of cooperation and the rapprochement to end a conflict. This paper also showed the importance of the way that principals manage schools, which according to teachers is more likely to fuel conflicts and that when a conflict occurs principals usually searches for the real causes that triggered it.