Interpersonal conflicts arising between children are not only difficult for children themselves, but also for teachers responsible for conducting educational and didactic activities with children. Empirical studies (based on the diagnostic survey method: interviews with children, questionnaires for teachers) conducted among one hundred preschool teachers working with six-year-olds, and among one hundred preschoolers, have revealed that a considerable percentage of the surveyed teachers underestimate the importance of children’s conflict situations in their educational activities. The teachers are mostly unaware of the developmental dimension of conflicts, and they emphasise mainly the negative impact of such situations on children (46%), often punishing their pupils – as claimed by six-year-olds – for becoming engaged in a dispute (48%). The teachers also fail, to a significant extent, to reflect upon incidents of conflict, be it reflection upon the situation in the course of action or reflection upon the action with the benefit of hindsight. Results obtained in the studies demonstrate that the teachers do not show their pupils what a constructive dispute is about, and do not teach them any ways to resolve a conflict situation in an integrative manner – in cooperation with other interaction partners. They also fail to explain the meaning of dialogue in the conflict process to children, despite claiming to do so (81%). The findings may imply that although teachers know which constructive procedures should be used in situations of conflict between children, they do not put their knowledge into practice because, e.g., they are not competent enough to do so.

The article deals with the results of the psychopedagogical experiment to find Polish and Ukrainian aspects of implementing the analysis methodology of social significance of a personal conflict behavior, made by the students. The study has been applied with the use of the authorial pscyhopedagogical exercises “Vibrations: ‘Me in a Conflict’” and “Vibrations: ‘Me and the World’”. The exercises were developed on the basis of archaic and historical, bioenergetical, art-therapeutic and systematic approaches. The study tasks implied to engage student youth to realize a social significance of a personal conflict behavior. It was concluded that youth usually consider a social conflict as the one which “exists separately” as an independent “mechanism”. They often forget that a person is an element of a social system; a number of negative psychoemotional conflicting behavioral patterns (intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts) make psychoemotional state of the World – a social conflict on a systemic approach. At the same time, students’ comprehension of this aspect is not the understanding and a direct definite change of the worldview and a personal conflict behavior. With free vibrations description on the models of the psychopedagogical, and experimentally proved, an individual subconsciously states the sense of the conflict-making problem as the fact that everything starts with us, our responsibility for the display of a personal conflict behavior that is an intrapersonal conflict. The students prove the assumption made in the beginning: social conflicts start with an intrapersonal and the transfer into an interpersonal conflict of every person, and a cultural difference makes its intensification. In spite of a significant influence of a cultural difference made by the students, this definite experiment didn’t show the difference in the analysis results of a personal conflict behavior performed by Polish and Ukrainian youth. Additionally, Polish and Ukrainian students unambiguously specified the developed psychopedgogical exercises of the analysis methodology of a social significance of a personal conflict behavior made by students, as effective ones. At the same time there appears an urgent need for intercultural education of the necessity to form a personal anti-conflict behavior based on a tolerant recognition “of people of different cultures, and different cultures in one person”.

The work presented here, prepared on the basis of my own research, addresses the dynamics of the conflict process among children at an early school age. The phase of children’s entry into conflict was outlined on the basis of a set of motives underlying the behaviours of 7–10-year-olds which get them to start conflicts with their contemporaries. The phase of escalation of the conflict process among children is characterized by interactions between conflict partners which are predominantly aggressive in nature. On the other hand, the phase of conflict resolution (conflictending methods) is distinct for a strategy of compensatory behaviours involving various forms of apology. The problem of the destructive and constructive impact of conflict situations on children’s life is also addressed. A special focus is on the development potential of situations referred to above, involving the teacher performing a role that is hard to overestimate. The results of the esearch discussed in the paper were obtained mainly on the basis of attributive projection.