Understanding Adolescents and Conflict

Abstract:The authors discuss conflicts through Dreikurs’s four goals of misbehavior, implications of conflict on adolescents in the education system and outside of school, and the existing inequities in society that greatly affect youth and their ability to relate to and resolve conflict with others. Developmental challenges children and youth face in an ever-changing world, especially in the current social context, are considered. The authors offer practical applications regarding conflict and relational implications, adolescents, and the systems they navigate. The authors explore the importance of understanding children as individuals who experience oppression from the systems and adults in their lives. The early work of Rudolf Dreikurs and Alfred Adler serves to describe how such dynamics are enacted within conflicts in the social world.