The Magic Circle Technique To Resolve Conflicts
Today it is essential to promote conflict resolution among children, and a technique such as the magic circle to resolve them can be very convenient, given its purpose of improving coexistence within the classroom by building positive bonds between children. .
What are conflicts and how to solve them in childhood?
A conflict itself refers to the confrontation between two people with conflicting interests, opinions, desires and positions regarding something. Conflicts are part of life, everyday life and interaction between people. And even children, from a young age, begin to have confrontations with each other.
Now, conflicts are an inherent part of social relationships and do not have to be negative, as long as they can be well resolved. In other words, a peaceful resolution of a conflict between people implies a possibility of learning, transformation and personal growth.
Therefore, it is important to teach children, from an early age, to manage conflict. This implies providing them with tools to help them manage negative situations and avoid aggressive and violent responses or behaviors.
And this implies, at the level of educational practice, the progressive teaching of skills aimed at improving the bonds between boys and girls in class, considering and working on activities that develop skills such as assertiveness, self-control, empathy, dialogue and active listening.
“Conflict, when handled correctly, strengthens.”
-Benjamin Watson-
What is the magic circle technique to resolve conflicts between children?
Among the many strategies that are aimed at conflict resolution, the magic circle is a psychopedagogical technique that aims to develop emotional intelligence. With which, the objective of the technique is to reinforce the positive bonds between children and lower the levels of stress and anxiety to work with the smallest conflictive situations and avoid reinforcing and feeding negative and hostile behaviors between them.
Thus, the magic circle technique is an ideal strategy to promote a good coexistence among children from 3 years of age. It can be helpful when there are kids in the class with some behavior problems, are more hyperactive, or show negative or challenging behaviors.
The magic circle allows the children to find solutions to the problems that the group may have. That is, that each of the boys is able to recognize the existence of a problem and their degree of responsibility in this and, thus, can also offer different ways and alternatives to solve it.
Description of the technique
- The boys should sit in a circle and their educator should stand inside it with an object in their hands. Then, the teacher will describe the conflict or problem that will be worked on, what it is, how it happened or is happening, between whom, etc.
- The object that the educator has in his hands must be related to the conflict in question, be it a toy that the children fight over, an object that they may have broken, even a drawing or an image that represents the conflict.
- Next, the teacher will give the object / conflict to a first child and each of them will have to say what they think about it. Subsequently, each boy will pass the object to the partner who is next to him in the circle.
- The rounds may be several and will depend on how the dynamics evolve. That is, in a first round, children can be encouraged to speak and describe the conflict, how they feel and what degree of responsibility they have in it. And, later, in the following rounds, the children can give ideas and alternatives to solve it.
It is interesting that in each of the rounds the educator encourages the children to express themselves and show affection when passing the object to their partner. And that they use phrases like: “it’s your turn, friend; I’m going to like what you say; Come on, we can all fix this together; it is better to have fun than to fight ”.
Benefits of applying the magic circle technique to resolve conflicts
Considering the purpose of improving coexistence within the classroom, the magic circle technique has the following benefits:
- It helps to solve conflicts that occurred between the little ones.
- It teaches how to generate alternatives for conflict resolution among children.
- It promotes the values of tolerance, solidarity and respect for diversity.
- Strengthen the bonds between classmates.
- Encourage participation and responsibility.
- It helps in the development of social and emotional skills such as empathy, active listening and self-control.
- Encourages creativity and imagination.
- Helps express and recognize feelings and emotions of guilt, anger, sadness, fear or rage.
- It favors reflection on reality, environments, contexts and environments.
- Increase the capacity for communication and dialogue.
- Improves the classroom climate and group harmony.
In short, we hope that you will soon put this technique into practice in class with your students. The results will pleasantly surprise you.
