GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this study was to find out if competing and avoidance strategies are effective tools for resolving conflicts in secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State. The study was conducted in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Expost-facto research design was used for this study. This design was considered appropriate for this research as it will investigate the already existing relationship between the independent variable (school conflicts) and the dependent variable (effective resolution strategy). The population of the study comprises all the public senior secondary school principals and teachers of senior secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state. There are 234 principals and 19,624 teachers distributed into 234 public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State. Cluster and random sampling techniques were used to select 990 respondents, which constituted the sample size used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a researcher-developed questionnaire titled "Competing and Avoidance Conflicts Resolution Strategies Questionnaire (CACRSQ)". Face and content validity of the instrument was carried out by a supervisor and a lecturer in test and measurement in the Faculty of Education, University of Uyo, Uyo. Instrument reliability was tested using the Cronbach reliability test at 0.94 coefficients. The data obtained was analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean) and standard deviation, while simple regression analysis will be used to analyze the hypotheses. The result was tested for significance at 0.05 alpha levels. The competitive strategy works best in a limited number of conflicts, such as emergency situations. In general, business owners benefit from reserving competitive strategies for crisis situations and decisions that generate ill-advised decisions, such as pay cuts or layoffs. Conflict avoidance can be used as a temporary measure to buy time or as a permanent means of disposing of a matter. The latter may be indistinguishable from simple acquiescence to the other party, to the extent that the person avoiding the conflict subordinates his/her own wishes to the party with whom there is conflict. One of the recommendations made in the study was that since the use of competing resolution strategies can have both positive and negative implications, it is important to know when and how to use competing as a conflict management strategy.