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"Metaphors of Anger: A Cooperative
Approach to Conflict in the Classroom" There is little disagreement that anger and conflict have become more prevalent in today's classrooms. To deal with the increase in aggression and violence among young people, many schools have adopted programs in conflict resolution and peer mediation in an effort to teach students a more appropriate means of working with their intense emotions (Eggert, 1995; Gibson, Mitchell, & Basile, 1993; Messing, 1992). However, for the classroom teacher who continually has to work with an angry student, these approaches may not be sufficient. They do not take into consideration the part the teacher plays in keeping the student's anger alive. A cooperative approach to managing conflict in the classroom requires that teachers understand and acknowledge their role in the experience and have a willingness to make changes in their own thoughts, feelings and actions. The interpersonal transaction cycle is a model that describes the interaction between two individuals as being a circular, causal relationship. Within any social transaction, the "interpersonal behavior of each [party] is simultaneously both a cause and an effect of the behavior of the other" (Wagner, Kiesler & Schmidt, 1995, p. 938). Therefore, any alteration in one interactant's behavior will cause a change in the behavior of the other. This premise is the foundation of the approach to classroom conflict that will be described in this article. A process of uncovering and examining one's metaphor for an angry student supports a change in the perception of the student, which alters the teacher's manner of interacting with that student. This change will often then cause an altering of the student's behaviors in the form of a reduction of his or her demonstration of anger. In this way, metaphorical exploration has the potential to be an effective tool for dealing with anger in the schools. Why Metaphors? Metaphors can be used to identify critical features within a complex situation. They can bring information and solutions from a wide variety of sources that do not directly pertain to the present incident and that might otherwise be ignored (Brown, 1991). They offer "a perspective or way of looking at things [and a process] by which new perspectives on the world come into existence" (Schon, 1979, p.254). Metaphors not only influence people's thoughts, actions and emotions but act to define everyday realities. In addition, they can serve to experientially motivate transformation of meaning (Johnson, 1981). Since "all knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical (or analogical) modes of perception and thought" (Leary, 1990, p.2) metaphors have the power to transform meaning within our cognition (Johnson, 1981). This transformative aspect of metaphors has allowed them to lead to "changes in human self-reference and hence to human self-consciousness" (Leary, 1990, p. 14). Transforming the Anger Experience
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