Communication barriers as a source of conflict situations in a school community

The paper reviews the urgent issue of enhancing the conflict culture in a school community involving the development of educational actors’ ability to adapt comfortably to the changing environment, resolving disagreements and conflicts constructively; fostering their tolerance, readiness to cooperate, hold a dialogue, reach a compromise. In this regard, the ability to recognize and eliminate systemic distortions of the conflict situation on time becomes relevant. The latter are reflected in the distortion of the conflict situation as a whole; the distortion of the behavioral motives in the conflict; the distortion of actions, statements, doings; the distortion of personal qualities; the illegitimacy of perceptual irradiation and the asymmetry of social perception; the stigmatization, i.e. the biased attribution of undesirable features to other people. The authors conclude that knowledge of systemic (perceptually estimated) distortions of a conflict situation is the important prerequisite and a component of a high culture of conflict interaction.