Teenagers as third-party mediators

Researchers from Australia, Malaysia and Sweden form part of DRACON International (DRAma for CONflict management) and share the basic view that drama can be an effective way for adolescents to learn to handle conflicts constructively. The main aims of the DRACON project have been: - to develop research methods in order to map students´ conflicts and strategies for handling conflicts and to study the effects of various drama exercises on individual, class and school levels; - to contribute to the development of a theory of conflict processes in different cultures in order to explain the effects of different types of interference´s in adolescents´ conflicts; - to develop and test integrated drama programmes giving adolescents in the three different cultures the opportunity of handling conflicts in a more constructive way. This book is the result of several years of collaborative teamwork between researchers from Australia, Malaysia and Sweden and aims at providing a starting-point for further development of drama and conflict management in educational settings.