Full text of DOI:10.1111/1540-4560.00006

Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2003, pp. 83--101
Negotiating Violence Prevention
∗
Colette Daiute , Rebecca Stern, and Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Evaluation research typically treats standards of violence prevention programs,
like other curricula, as unquestioned values of a good society, while identifying
youth as the problem to be solved. This article explains how the evaluative gaze
can, in contrast, be critically fixed on the interpretations of various stake holders
in the violence prevention enterprise, including curriculum authors, teachers, and
youth, whose social values are often under-represented. In the context of a year-
long literacy-based violence prevention curriculum focusing on racial and ethnic
rd
th
discrimination in 3 and 5 grade urban classrooms, 5 teachers, their classes, and
6 individual students from these classes expressed contradictory and conforming
3
values, suggesting to us the need to invite negotiation of social values as part of
democratic education.
Theoretical Background
Like most social institutions, violence prevention programs are built upon
stated and unstated values. We argue that evaluation research typically treats cur-
riculum standards as unquestioned values of a good society, while identifying
youth as the problem to be solved. The evaluative gaze can, however, be critically
fixed on the interpretations of various stake-holders in the violence prevention
enterprise. In particular, we illustrate how young people’s values around issues of
social conflict introduce important tensions across diverse socio-political interests
represented by curricula and their implementation in public schools.
Our approach is to examine a violence prevention program through critical
discourse theory (Daiute, 1998; Gates, 1992; Harre & Gillet, 1994), explaining
∗
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Colette Daiute, The Graduate
Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 [e-mail: cdaiute@gc.cuny.edu]. The authors
are indebted to the teachers and students who participated in this curriculum study, all of whom are
given pseudonyms to maintain their anonymity. We also thank the William T. Grant Foundation who
generously funded most of the research reported in this paper, and we are grateful to Ellie Buteau and
Martin Ruck for their assistance.
83
ꢀ
C
2003 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

8
4
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
that children’s everyday social interactions are contexts for understanding ten-
sions in values across the school, home, media, and peer cultures in which they
live. We also integrate Black identity theory (Cross, 1991) and social theory
(de Certeau, 1984) with discourse approaches to explain how values are situated in
socio-historical experience. This focus on the situated nature of social understand-
ing extends developmental theory (Selman, Watts, & Schultz, 1997), which has
been the foundation for numerous violence prevention programs (Aber, Brown, &
Henrich, 1999; Johnson & Johnson, 1996; Weissberg & Bell, 1997).
Youth violence prevention programs can be analyzed for their guiding values
about social relations from specific theoretical perspectives. Values are sometimes
stated in propositions like “conflict resolution and peer mediation . . . [used for] in-
tegrative negotiation” (Johnson & Johnson, 1996, p. 477), “experiment with new
and different ways of handling conflicts” (Samples & Aber, 1998, p. 228), “pro-
moting self-esteem . . . so youth need not resort to violence . . .” and “teaching val-
ues . . . of love [caring]) and freedom [self-determination]” (Berkower, 1998, p. 1),
but the values promoted in programs are sometimes implicit, such as the placement
of programs in cities, suggesting that urban youth are particularly in need of this
type of instruction. Analyzing values as they are interpreted by different partici-
pants in a violence prevention program could reveal the relativity of any particular
set of foundational values and raise questions about the effectiveness and fairness
of prevention programs in diverse societies. The nature of differences in values
expressed in the context of a particular program offers insights, furthermore, about
the kinds of values that vary and thus require attention in research and practice.
Evaluation studies have introduced research designs and related measures
based on assumptions that problems occur in individual behavior or understanding,
with only some programs relating these to social, environmental, or macro-social
measures (Elliott, Hamburg, & Williams, 1998; Weissberg, & Bell, 1997). Anal-
yses of program effectiveness have assessed children’s aggressiveness, impulsiv-
ity, interpersonal negotiation strategies, cognitive capacities, and social deviance
(Samples & Aber, 1998; Selman et al., 1997), and a few have identified symbolic
processes such as aggressive fantasies and narrative representations of social con-
flict (Aber, Brown, & Henrich, 1999; Daiute & Buteau, 2002). To date, we have
found no previous studies that make social values the focus of theory, practice,
or assessment, and few studies that include extended reflections or interactions of
program participants.
The consequence of evaluating whether participants master program values
is that challenges to the program emerge as individuals’ failures. Consistent with
these ideas, our study is based on the concern that when mastery of program values
is the goal, important differences across students’ and teachers’ social, cultural,
and political lives are ignored—differences that have increasingly been shown to
influence learning (Daiute, Campbell, Griffin, Reddy, & Tivnan, 1993). Although
there may be universal agreement about the importance of eliminating physical

Negotiating Violence Prevention
85
and psychological violence in schools (Elliott, Hamburg, & Williams, 1998), our
analysis of this previous research suggests that teachers and students interact with
issues of violence from diverse positions of power, motivation, and experience,
suggesting that curricula, like other institutions, should be examined from multiple
points of view. Establishing theory and methods to interrogate foundations of social
programs is important, we argue, for gaining insights about how young people
understand social conflict and for assessing the contributions of such programs to
social education in diverse societies.
Toward a Theory of Social Values
Previous research has shown how children are socialized to cultural beliefs and
practices in educational, vocational, and social domains (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch,
1
991), but young people are also active constructors of social values in classroom
contexts (Daiute, 1998; Guitierrez, Rhymes, & Larson, 1995). Tested here is the
theory that when children draw on their experiences, they transform social values
promoted by adults in their environments—in this case their teachers. Thus, we
propose that in some contexts children may conform to educational agendas, while
in others they may change, contradict, or reject them. We base our study further
on the idea that the more heterogeneous the context, like urban public schools, the
more dynamic the interplay of students, teachers, and broader institutional values,
and the more important it is to consider diverse perspectives. Children working
with knowledge about discrimination and poverty (Cross, 1991), for example,
are particularly adept at shifting classroom discourse when given the opportunity
(Daiute, Buteau, & Rawlins, 2001). The schools where we did our research pro-
vided contexts for the expression of diverse social values by participants from a
range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
We conceptualize “values” as culturally-specific ways of knowing, feeling,
and acting in response to environmental, economic, and social circumstances—a
definition based in socio-cultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1991). Individ-
uals in heterogeneous societies interact with multiple cultures and diverse values
systems, which may or may not overlap spontaneously (Guitierrez et al., 1995;
Lee, 1993). Research on social development suggests that the ability to negotiate
diverse perspectives comes with cognitive maturity (Piaget, 1968), yet diverse in-
terpretations of the social environment, such as perceiving racist threats or not, are
also the result of socialization (Cross, 1991) and instruction (Lee, 1993). Issues
of power, rights, and responsibilities in social relations thus become paramount in
the development of knowledge in educational settings (Walkerdine, 1984).
“
Youth perspective” is, then, the set of values children express especially in
their interactions with peers, where relatively equal power relations allow young
people to voice a wider range of knowledge and practices than they do in the
official curriculum of teacher-led discussions (Daiute et al., 1993). In this way,

8
6
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
we conceptualize “youth perspectives” as formed in the multiple cultures where
they live with peers, in school, at home, and cognitive processes flow from these
contexts. The study described in this article is designed to identify the dynamic
and situated nature of youth perspectives as expressed across diverse contexts,
including full class discussions and peer group interactions. In class discussions,
children may tend to conform to values expressed by teachers, such as their empha-
sis on empathizing with adversaries in conflicts. In peer interactions, these same
children may express quite different values, such as the difficulty of resolving
conflicts because of inter-group prejudices.
Socialtheory(deCerteau, 1984)explainsthattherelativeunder-representation
of diverse student values in classroom settings is an issue of power relations. As
representatives of the “will and power [in] . . . an educational institution” (de
Certeau, 1984, p. 36), teachers’ interactions are endowed as “strategies” control-
ling the educational enterprise, while students’ interactions are relegated to more
“
tactical” responses, since they do not set the educational agenda. In large class
settings, for example, children’s discourse would be a “tactical” process, such as
speaking out of turn, speaking too much, or not speaking enough in desired ways,
rather than shifting substantive aspects of the discussion, while during peer inter-
actions, children have extended the nature of task-related ideas more than when
working with the teacher on similar class assignments (Daiute et al., 1993). Of
course, the application of power relations in any given situation such as school
would be moderated by historical and personal experiences—such that teachers
who identify with discriminated groups might be put in tactical positions during
interactions with administrators, even though they have strategic control in their
classrooms. Our analyses explore whether and in what circumstances teachers and
students exert strategic control as their expression of social values conforms—or
does not—to those of the curriculum.
Focusing on the negotiation of social values in a violence prevention pro-
gram, this inquiry addresses the question: What values tensions (consistencies,
contradictions, complementarities) are revealed across curriculum materials and
implementations of the curriculum by teachers and children in different situations?
Addressing this question, we offer insights about the complexity and dynamics of
social values in classroom contexts and consider implications of value negotiations
for social issues instruction in educational institutions.
Analyzing Values in a Violence Prevention Program
The context of the study is 3rd through 5th grade classrooms in two public
schools in a large Northeastern city where children and teachers introduced issues
of racial and ethnic discrimination as a theme, and used high-quality children’s
literature as the point of departure for class discussions, peer group activities, and
children’s writing about social conflict (Walker, 1998). For example, one literary

Negotiating Violence Prevention
87
rd
selection for 3 grade was a story about verbal and physical discrimination involv-
ing a White boy (Raymond) and a recent immigrant Vietnamese girl (Hoa). A 5th
grade literary selection was a story about a group of children in a Black community
who had to attend a school serving mostly Whites when their school closed. A
teacher’s guide states the major values to be examined in relation to each novel
through guided oral readings, class discussions, and a range of writing activities.
The teachers’ guides included discussion questions to identify central conflicts in
the stories from different characters’ perspectives about causes, resolutions, and
consequences of conflicts.
Students wrote expository and narrative texts about social conflict, individu-
ally and with peers, about half way through the study of each book, to create an
original ending to the story after a high point in the discrimination conflict. As an
alternative to the teacher-led class discussion, this writing activity involved young
peers in dyadic and small group interactions. The writing activity in relation to the
novel Mayfield Crossing, for example, asked children to continue the story after
the character, Clayton, said, “ ‘I’m the pitcher! Get off my mound! . . . You deaf or
something, tar baby?’ as he marched across the field with about twenty kids fol-
lowing him.” This activity provided a context for role-playing conflict-resolution
strategies promoted in the curriculum as well as leeway for introducing students’
own values.
We used a systematic process to identify participants from a larger sample
of nine classes, making this labor-intensive study feasible. Selection criteria in-
cluded: (a) classes at each grade level with a full set of transcripts of teacher-led
discussions and peer group discussions (research protocols involved audiotaping
all the curriculum-related class sessions and as many small peer group sessions as
possible), (b) teachers and students from a range of race/ethnicity groups and teach-
ing experience, and (c) data from the 1997–1998 school year which maintained
consistency involvement with the curriculum.
Participants in the study described here were five teachers and their students:
rd
2
5
5 students per class in the three 3 grades and 35 students per class in the two
th
grades. Student discourse was analyzed as a group in the teacher-led class
discussions and individually in the peer interactions. Interactions by 36 students
rd
th
(
10maleand8female3 graders, and10maleand8female5 graders)workingon
the peer writing activities were analyzed. Representing the range of race/ethnicity
backgrounds in the schools, the five teachers included one identifying as African
American, one as Latina (Puerto Rican), and three as European American. Of the
five teachers, four were experienced teachers and one was a novice teacher. The 36
childrenwhosepeerinteractionswereexaminedincludedtenidentifyingasAfrican
American, six as Latino/a, five as European-American, three as mixed-race, two as
Asian-American, two as other, and eight unidentified. The race/ethnicity pattern
represents that of the broader school system.

8
8
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
Data collection sampled from curriculum activities in principled ways to cap-
ture social arrangements varying in power relations—represented here by teacher-
student interactions and student-peer interactions. Data included 38 transcripts of
teacher-led class discussions and 25 transcripts of peer interactions, selected from
the beginning, middle, and end of the unit to ensure a representative range of
interactions.
Data analyses involved examining values in conversations across contexts.
With social values as the units of analysis, a taxonomy of values promoted in
the curriculum grounds our examination of teachers’ and students’ expression of
values. Our focus is children’s peer interactions, based on our theory that children
are especially likely to introduce diverse values when they interact in relatively
equal power contexts. Providing contexts where children in multi-cultural urban
settings can express their social values is important, in large part, because ad-
dressing problems like discrimination should rely on children’s social histories.
Identifying diverse social values, thus, is an opportunity to assess the potential for
equitable social exchange.
Identifying Values
The values analysis proceeded in several phases, including (a) creating coding
categories by compiling a list of stated and implied values in curriculum-related
documents (an overview of the program, teacher’s guides for focal literary se-
lections, and notes from training sessions), (b) identifying values expressed by
teachers as they led their classes in program lessons, (c) identifying values ex-
pressed by children in the teacher-led discussions and when working with peers,
(d) computing percentages of social values expressed within and across contexts.
Eighteen values stated in the curriculum materials and the transcripts form the
basis of the coding scheme. The researcher who compiled the list of values from the
curriculum materials also wrote a definition for each value with examples. Since
values are often implicit and draw on extended interactions, identifying values
involved examining the broader context of interactions in a transcript and across
interactions by a participant. Thus, while a code is assigned to a specific conver-
sational turn, definitive assignment of that code might require reading beyond the
turn, as mentioned in relation to some of the examples below.
The first group of values in the taxonomy includes Love and freedom values.
Love values refer to establishing and strengthening relationships, understanding
others, being kind, and making connections when relationships aren’t smooth. An
example of such a value as expressed by one of the teachers is, “These characters
should find some way to get along, something in common.”
Freedom values, on the other hand, have to do with an individual’s or a group’s
self-determination, rights to respect, and ability to accept responsibility for prob-
lematic interactions. Teachers who stress freedom values might discuss that a

Negotiating Violence Prevention
89
newcomer to a classroom has the right to dress in whatever way he or she pleases
without being teased. Also, a teacher who emphasizes freedom values might be
likely to address social oppressions such as racism directly, stressing that conflicts
must be identified and examined: “When you feel wronged, you have to defend
yourself and your people.” The difference between a love and freedom value in
relation to a specific conflict comes about in a person’s description of it, and, ac-
cording to discourse theory, even certain seemingly minor differences in wording
express social relational realities and govern action (Harre & Gillet, 1994).
Ultimately, the curriculum advocates a balance of love and freedom values,
with this balance as the definition of “health.” The following quote expresses
such complexity: “You always have many different feelings, don’t you? . . . But
there’s always a mixture of feelings it seems to me, like you want to stick up for
yourself but you also want to try again to talk to that person.” Other statements
balancing love and freedom values might mention respect for individual privacy
as sometimes limited by the need to seek mutual understanding.
Several major values revolve around social conflict, including values about the
natureofconflict, conflictescalation, conflictresolution, anddifferentparticipants
in the resolution process. A major assumption about conflict in the curriculum is
thatrelationshipsdon’talwaysgosmoothly, whichmeans, incurriculumterms, that
love and freedom might clash. One teacher, for example, who often used metaphors
said, “There was ice existing between Raymond and Hoa, and what broke the ice?”
to define conflict in terms of the cold feelings antagonists sometimes have toward
each other.
The teacher’s extension of this definition with the familiar expression “break-
ing the ice” expresses another major aspect of the curriculum: the analysis of
interactions to determine how conflicts escalate, which is expressed in this quote
by another teacher: “Now when some nasty things are happening and the conflict
is building, steps are going up to a higher and higher level of conflict.” The empha-
sis on conflict resolution is expressed well by the following quote: “Okay here’s
another thing you can do. With the person you’re having the conflict with, you can
agree on a rule.”
The curriculum posits that perspective-coordination is a basic social-
developmental skill required for resolving conflicts, as expressed in several cur-
riculum values including perspective-taking, coordinating one’s own perspective
with that of others, and expressing empathy and/or emotions. According to theory
underlying the curriculum, conflict participants must understand and value each
other’s points of view in order to resolve their conflict. Examples of these values
include, “And the parents might look at it and say he’s [been] hurting; the kids
looked at it and thought something completely different,” and “Someone want to
tell us what it felt like?”
Mutual understanding also involves valuing diversity. Comments expressing
diversity values express it as a given for many people and often as an obstacle, as in

9
0
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
the following summary: “A newcomer to a community, a neighborhood, a school
or a group, right—everyone has that feeling of not being sure if they’re going to
make friends or know the language or if they’re going to fit in.”
Four social orientations to conflict resolution expressed in curriculum values
are (a) individual orientation, where personal needs, decisions, and qualities are
depicted as central to conflict and resolution, (b) a social/historical orientation
that appreciates cultural and other kinds of difference but does not necessarily em-
phasize the power differentials related to diversity, (c) a social/political orientation
representing conflicts as processes of power relations, fairness, discrimination, or
other justice criteria, and (d) a universalist approach which minimizes differences
and emphasizes basic human similarities. An individual approach expressed in the
quote “Somehow along the way that kid escaped racism by listening to his own
heart and doing what he thinks is right” contrasts most sharply with the socio-
historical approach in the following comment: “I didn’t fit in because the Puerto
Ricans in New York are raised a little differently.” The universal approach, in con-
trast, emphasizes similarity rather than difference: “All mothers have expectations
for their children.”
Three other kinds of values emerged from preliminary analyses of the class-
room implementation of the curriculum. They are: (a) literacy, which includes
references to plot devices, character development, vocabulary, spelling, and liter-
ary conventions (chapters, headings, etc.), (b) pedagogy/academics, referring to
discussions around the issue of “how to do school,” such as how to work with a
partner, (c) classroom behavior, such as waiting one’s turn to speak.
Preliminary analyses of student interactions made clear the need to account
for novel or “unique” values, including those that violated the curriculum values.
Examples of unique values include two young partners’ proposal that two charac-
ters’ fight ended after a beating by the principal—a punitive approach that would
not be tolerated in the curriculum. A different unique comment was made by a
student who sided with a bully character saying “make me,” belligerently reject-
ing another character’s appeal that he stop teasing. Interaction processes were also
coded against the curriculum values, such as participants’ arguments and helping
behaviors.
Coding Social Conflict Discourse
A coding manual refined through several phases of reading transcripts was the
reference point for analyses. After preparing transcripts, coding identified values
expressed per speaker turn, and then writing case summaries for each teacher-led
class and student pair session. Categories were assigned as discretely as pos-
sible, but coding was not mutually exclusive, since a turn could, for example,
express a perspective-coordination value and a pedagogy value. For each value,
there was a set of defining features and a range of expressions. For example,

Negotiating Violence Prevention
91
perspective-coordination value expressions mention psychological state verbs
“think . . . felt”; “feel . . . made fun”) for at least two persons, as in the following
(
questions by two teachers: “How do you think Raymond felt when the principal
broke up the fight?” and, somewhat differently, “How would you feel if someone
made fun of your clothes?”
Coding reliability was addressed in several ways: (a) the three authors coded
several of the same transcripts until they achieved 80% agreement on two tran-
scripts, (b) then, one researcher coded the transcripts of teacher-led classes and
another coded the peer transcripts, (c) to increase consistency across codings, re-
searchers checked each other’s codings, discussed and resolved any disagreements.
Identifying the curriculum values, as we described above, achieved one study
goal of making explicit the value system underlying a particular educational vi-
olence prevention institution. Our second goal of identifying whether and how
individual teachers and students participating in this institution expressed these or
other values involved a qualitative analysis. With the values coding scheme as a
guide, we created a case description for each teacher and student, via a process
of identifying values in repeated readings of the transcripts and supporting those
qualitative readings by computing percentages of turns per transcript (and mean
percentages across transcripts) in which participants expressed each curriculum
value.
With a general description of how the teachers implemented the curriculum
values, we then turned to characterize the students’ expression of values across the
two contexts to reflect on theory about power relations and social values. In the
teacher-led class discussion, we examined student comments in the transcripts as a
combined student group, because they were not always identified and because class
discussions tend to treat students as a unit (Guitierrez et al., 1995). In addition to de-
scribing whether and how students adopted the curriculum values as implemented
by their teachers, this qualitative analysis identified students’ preferred values
expressions when they work in the relatively equal power situation with peers.
Procedures for the case description process involved responding to a set of
questions with summaries and examples when reading through each transcript and
when summarizing across the set of transcripts for a teacher/class. The questions
guiding the case analysis were: (a) “What Voices of Love and Freedom (VLF)
general values did the teacher (and the students as a group) emphasize, with what
consistency and/or variation across the transcripts?” (b) “Discuss whether and
how the teacher’s (and students’) orientation conformed to the VLF values (trans-
formed them or differed dramatically) as discussed in the guides, modules, and
overall philosophy.” (c) “Summarize the teachers’ (and students’) orientation to
the curriculum values by selecting several characteristic turns—expressions that
capture the characteristic value expression of the curriculum—and display these on
a chart with each value for each transcript, across participants, and contexts.” These
written summaries by at least two members of the research team were remarkably

9
2
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
similar in terms of the values noted and the characteristic examples isolated. These
descriptive summaries were accompanied by charts of percentages of turns (based
on frequencies) expressing each value per transcript and per teacher. These per-
centages served to support the qualitative descriptions and to provide a basis for
general descriptive (not statistical) comparisons.
Since these analyses are qualitative, we make no claims about the definitive or
absolute nature of teachers’ or students’ values, nor do we imply any generalization
beyond the five classrooms examined here. Instead, we open up typically unques-
tioned and unexamined values as they occur within and across teacher/student roles
in five classrooms including teachers and students from a variety of backgrounds.
Our inquiry thus involves a theory-based illustration of social value expressions.
Results: Contradiction and Conformity Around Social Values
Patterns of consistency and variation can be characterized as a value negoti-
ation process. Of particular interest is the nature of children’s values when they
worked with peers and when they worked in teacher-led class discussions.
Teachers Embedded the Violence Prevention Institution Within
the Educational Institution
Transcripts of the teacher-led class discussions revealed that the teachers all
expressed the violence prevention curriculum values, albeit in different combina-
tions. Close readings of each transcript in terms of the curriculum value categories
indicated, also, that each teacher devoted considerable time to expressing educa-
tional values about pedagogical practices.
Table 1 presents the percent of turns in which the five teachers expressed each
curriculum value. As shown by the percentages in Table 1, all the teachers empha-
sized pedagogy skills more than any other values, with the mean number of turns
devoted to reinforcing pedagogical practices such as raising one’s hand to speak,
speaking loudly, using language precisely, etc., ranging from 16% to 34%. The two
fifth grade teachers emphasized literacy values also, as did one of the third grade
teachers, with 10% and 18% of the fifth grade teachers’ turns devoted to literacy
values and 10% of one of the third grade teachers’ turns devoted to literacy values
such as reading carefully, writing descriptively, and using characters’ dialogue for
insights about their beliefs.
Beyond those few common patterns, we observed some striking differences
acrossteachers. Threeteachers, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. WarrenandMs. Bates(European-
Americans, as noted in Table 1) can be described as expressing values in patterns
consistent with the curriculum, though they certainly brought their own inflections
to the process. As illustrated in the pattern of turns expressing each value (Table 1),
Mrs. Smith devoted 10% or more of her comments to values related to the issue of

Negotiating Violence Prevention
93

9
4
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
conflicting points of view (17%), analyzing diversity (11%), and resolving con-
flicts (10%), with the expression of freedom values just behind (9%). Mrs. Warren
and Ms. Bates devoted 10% and 13% of their comments to conflict resolution
respectively. Thus, we see an emphasis by the three European-Americans on the
ultimate goal of the curriculum, which was to engage students in awareness and
practice of conflict resolution strategies (Walker, 1998).
Case descriptions revealed that Mrs. Gates and Mrs. Morales did not put much
emphasis on conflict resolution. Mrs. Gates devoted only 1% of her comments to
conflict resolution and Mrs. Morales 5%. Mrs. Gates’ lack of focus on conflict
resolution was offset by her dramatic focus on pedagogy in 34% of her utter-
ances. Mrs. Morales’ orientation emphasized intergroup and interpersonal social
relational themes, including analyzing socio-historical aspects of conflict (17%),
promoting that participants express their feelings in conflicts (15%), and analyzing
socio-political aspects of conflicts (13%). These characteristic patterns by teach-
ers illustrate the complexity of implementing a social issues curriculum and the
possibility of interesting diversity across teachers. Particularly intriguing for fu-
ture study is the indication here that teachers from non-mainstream backgrounds
did not emphasize the conflict resolution value, which may indicate some critique
about curriculum assumptions about the causes of social problems. Minimizing
the focus on individual children’s conflict resolution skills may imply more em-
phasis on society’s role in promoting or allowing conflicts. This was explicit in
the instruction of Mrs. Morales, for example, who mentioned societal involvement
(“They had a problem with us because we were Puerto Ricans from New York.”).
On the other hand, Mrs. Gates’ intense focus on appropriate school practices in
the absence of promoting specific conflict resolution practices was a more subtle
shifting of the violence prevention curriculum. Both strategies are interestingly
consistent with previous critiques by African American scholars (Delpit, 1988)
that explicit instruction in mainstream values is the business of school and not
instruction in social relations, which Black children already know.
While such descriptions of teachers’ social values require further study to
establish their stability, they provide a backdrop for our analysis of the students’
values expressions.
Table 2 presents percentages of student turns devoted to curriculum values in
the teacher-led class discussions and in peer group interactions. Students’ values
expressions in the teacher-led classes conformed to the curriculum value of conflict
resolution (12%) and also echoed the teachers’ emphasis on general educational
values with expressions of pedagogy values (15%) and literacy values (14%). The
present study does not provide the means to do so, but it would be interesting in
future research to assess whether any different emphases across teachers’ value
expressions were reflected in the students’ orientations in the class discussions.
Particularly intriguing in this study, for example, is the issue of whether stu-
dents in Mrs. Morales’ class tended to emphasize, as she did, socio-historical and

Negotiating Violence Prevention
95
Table 2. Percent of Turns Devoted to Different Values Used by Students in Teacher-Led
Classes and Student Interactions
Mean Percentage Student Mean Percentage in
Curriculum Values
Values with Teacher
Peer Interactions
Love Values
Freedom Values
Balanced Love and Freedom
Nature of Conflict
Analysis of Causes and Build-Up
Resolution of Conflict
Resolution Participants or Agents
Expressing Own/Others’ Points of View
Expressing Feelings Can Lead to Understanding
Analyzing Diversity
1%
1%
0%
1%
7%
12%
4%
9%
9%
3%
0%
0%
8%
7%
1%
14%
15%
2%
4%
1%
1%
4%
4%
15%
12%
5%
16%
1%
3%
3%
3%
1%
3%
1%
1%
7%
1%
19%
Roles Played by Diversity
Individual Approach to Conflict
Social/Historical Approach to Conflict
Socio/Political Approach to Conflict
Universalist Approach to Conflict
Relating to Literacy Events, Artifacts, or Elements
Pedagogy–Statements About How to Do School
Behavior Comments
Unique Values
Note. Percentages were rounded to nearest whole number, so totals may not equal 100.
socio-political aspects of conflicts. Overall, the percentage of student turns locat-
ing social problems in groups and institutions was 8% and 7% respectively, which
seems high for students the age of those in our study, so exploring whether this a
general orientation or one more specific to individual teachers’ orientations seems
an important focus for future research.
Student Values in Peer Groups: Youth Transformation of Curriculum
Their expression of conflict escalation values (15% with peers, 7% with the
teacher) demonstrated children’s apparent penchant for playing out conflicts in
detailed and sometimes exaggerated or playful ways, as in the following excerpt
by two fifth graders: “Well they didn’t play, they asked politely that they wanted
to play? And they tried to be kind to them? But they didn’t get a chance to play so
they’re getting’ mad and start a, have an, after the argument they’ll start a bigger
fight.” Children also sought understandings, sometimes persistently, about what all
the trouble was about, such as a third grader, using “perspective taking” to criticize
a character’s actions, while also confronting his partner’s misrepresentation of the
character: “So why he hit, so why he hit Hoa? For no reason? Just like thaaaat?”
Children’s expression of unique values was remarkable (19% in peer interac-
tions and 4% in teacher-led classes), warranting discussion about how it illustrates

9
6
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
issues of social values instruction and extensions of the curriculum. Unique values
were not all the same, but we kept this as a single code to gain general insights
about values extending beyond the curriculum.
Children’s Strategic Work via Unique Values
Children’s introduction of unique values is an appropriate use of peer contexts
and, giventhateveryonehassocialexperiencestoinformtheirstudyofacurriculum
focusing on conflict, it is not surprising that children would bring in some novel
perspectives. The following discussion is a qualitative summary of the nature
of transformations in children’s values coded as “unique.” Unique values often
introduced novel orientations to conflict into the classroom. For example, one
student introduced a value of “safety” when he stated that it didn’t matter to
him whether the conflict with a step-parent was resolved, just as long he “felt
alright [because] his door was locked.” Sometimes unique values were humorous
or uncharacteristic of classroom discourse, such as a boy and a girl in a story
solving their conflict by kissing each other.
Children’s unique values sometimes contrasted dramatically from major as-
sumptions in the curriculum and in teachers’ interpretations of the curriculum. The
curricular emphasis on peaceful resolution, which in some cases was an injunction
against disagreement and fighting, emerged as somewhat controversial in the light
of children’s unique values, expressed as “we needed revenge” and the insistence
that a person has to fight when being treated unfairly, or the mention of stereo-
types. Young people’s numerous physically and verbally aggressive interactions
also challenge the taboo against conflict. For example, two boys were enticed to
prove their physical strength to the group of girls accusing them of not knowing
how to fight, or fighting like “a chicken.” Gradually, children in a group all began
challenging and threatening each other, with phrases such as: “I would like to
smack her [a few unclear words] own sister,” and “You need to be quiet ‘cause
you’re scared of girls,” and “I scared of her? I would knock her down!” Other
unique value expressions were phrased as less violent threats: “You are getting
on my nerves,” or “Shut up,” or “You’re an idiot.” Also, some unique points of
view were developed around literary characters, such as when children excused the
principal’s hands off attitude because he was not aware of Raymond’s behavior,
when they proposed that Raymond was in love with Hoa, and when they created
violent and confrontational story endings instead of resolutions with characters
getting along.
Another assumption that children seemed to challenge implicitly in their peer
interactions was the focus on the equality of all perspectives and thus the possibility
for resolution. It is not surprising that children from family backgrounds that have
experienced discrimination might question universalist explanations that “every-
one is really the same and can get along.” A powerful interaction by two immigrant

Negotiating Violence Prevention
97
boys, one of Arab descent and one of Western European heritage, illustrates how
young people can critique mainstream society with some specific details that they
do not express in the larger class discussion: “What a ‘bad’ country America is”;
“America sucks, come on, America sucksa . . . it’s not a good country, it has a lot
of pollution, it does, I mean look at the manners they have”; and “the bad language
they have”; and “yeah, the bad language, you can’t even get used to them.” This
international perspective on treatment of newcomers is not only unique but also
analytically complex in its detail and causal connections. Even though this, like
other examples, is not stated explicitly as a critique of curriculum values, it is
precise and strong, coming from nine-year-olds.
Children also uniquely raised questions around basic assumptions of school
practice, such as the presumed need to embed the discussion of serious issues, like
racism, in virtual contexts like sports literature. A pair of girls, one identifying as
African American and the other as Latina, questioned the sense of taking away
“
baseball privileges” because of racism: “I don’t think they’re gonna beat each
other up just because of baseball”; and “if they’re racist, why they gonna beat each
other up, ‘cause of baseball?”
Analysis of conversations between two African American girls in the third
grade class of a White teacher who focused on inter-personal comfort in cross-race
relations, for example, shows that one girl in particular transformed and resisted
teacher-expressed values. This young student recognized issues of diversity in
herself, but brought in a self-stereotype (she wrote a lot as “an African person”).
She also introduced profanity (repeated the word “bitch”) and put herself in Hoa’s
situation, turning a scene into a violent event (“someone got killed in the nose”).
She had an unusual resolution agent (lawyer), expressing knowledge of contentious
and systematic aspects of social conflict. She implied physical aggression when
threatening her partner (will pull her ear off), albeit in a joking way.
A similar value differing from those in the curriculum occurred when, rather
than explaining that Raymond was wrong, as did his teacher, one boy stated that
Raymond couldn’t control himself—almost a justification for his bullying be-
havior. Later, this same student placed negative consequences on Hoa (the actual
victim) alone, when he suggested that she should get suspended. Whether these
were positions of emergent sexism, racism, or playing devil’s advocate, much of
the two boys’ discussion ran counter to the curriculum values.
In summary, the expression of values emerges as dynamic. In particular, chil-
dren’s use of the peer context to introduce values largely absent from the official
space of the teacher-led discussions suggests that such negotiation can occur when
classroom structure is varied. The same children who tactically seized the opportu-
nity of a teacher-led class discussion to chat with friends about lunchtime activities
instead of listening to a story about the plight of young Black children caught in
racial strife, used the peer context to introduce, strategically, novel values about
issues of racism. In this peer context, a young Jamaican immigrant apparently drew

9
8
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
on experience not elicited in the larger classroom when she passionately explained
to her peer writing partner that people in their school acted in the same unwelcom-
ing and unfair ways toward immigrant children as did the racist characters in the
book. This child, moreover, wrote some conflict stories with resolutions conform-
ing to the rules of conflict resolution promoted by the teacher and the violence
prevention curriculum. In this way, a child who uses classroom contexts tactically
and strategically to conform to and contest institutional values, raises questions to
us about any absolute standards for conflict resolution processes and outcomes.
Although the scope of this study did not allow for systematic comparison of values
expressed by children across race/ethnicity groups, some of the most striking ex-
amples of strategic use of the peer context were by children identifying as African
American and Latino/a.
Children’s values expressions across the teacher-led and peer contexts under-
score the need to conceptualize values as situated rather than absolute. The specific
nature of the differences, moreover, suggests the importance, from young people’s
points of view, of consistently expressing values that differ from and sometimes
contradict those in the curriculum. Certain curriculum values like resolving con-
flicts at all costs may cut short crucial deliberations that are germane to children’s
social develoment. Thus, rather than resisting values per se, we suggest that young
people may be exerting control in their peer interactions to account for important
unexamined aspects of the idealized social values in the official class discussion,
such as when they express violence during an anti-violence curriculum and pro-
pose how the wronged character might be problematic or the bully misunderstood.
Motivations for such strategic shifts would be the children’s need to make sense
of school work and their need to account for real life in contrast to the ideal life
promoted in instruction, as well as, perhaps, to have a little fun. When violence
prevention programs are placed in contexts where children are presumed to have
experienced discrimination conflicts, it should not be surprising that they may
need or want to express life experiences that the curriculum actually represses.
The more socially relevant the curriculum, the more children may be positioned
with no obvious option but to express contradictory values.
These observations about the intense negotiation of social values are consis-
tent, moreover, with recent theory and research in moral psychology (Nucci, 2001).
After many centuries of scholarship attempting to identify singular foundational
grounds for moral decision-making (summarized in Nucci, 2001), researchers
have begun to explore the context-dependent nature of judgments about human
relations, welfare, and fairness (Nucci, 2001). Social developmental analyses have,
thus, begun to consider the relevance of moral conventions to personal circum-
stances and goals, such as one’s position in a social hierarchy and the salience of
social mores to practicalities and interpersonal issues entailed in moral dilemmas.
Accounting for moral openness in these ways Nucci (2001) offers further insight

Negotiating Violence Prevention
99
that children, who in some instances demonstrate mastery, good will, and maturity,
when addressing issues of racial and ethnic discrimination, might readily shift to
voice contradictory values when the discussion is personal, salient, and replete
with true-to-life details lacking in a general discussion.
In summary, this analysis of youth perspectives on social conflict illustrates
how children as young as seven years old negotiate social values in a violence
prevention program. The patterns of conforming and unique values indicate, more-
over, that social experiences contribute to establishing classroom-based knowledge
and that young people use tactical opportunities from their relatively powerless
positions to extend the curriculum as they challenge it. Even though young peers
seem to re-construct the curriculum values more than adopt them directly, analyses
from other studies in this curriculum context suggest that young people internalized
some of the major messages (Daiute, Buteau, & Rawlins, 2001). Young people’s
values were thus, we argue, developed as an interplay between their participa-
tion in the violence prevention institution and their critical reflection based on
attempts to make sense of the curriculum values in light of their own social and
emotional experience. We propose that, when inviting young people to negotiate
social values at their core, a curriculum could be an opportunity to develop the
educational institution as well as individual children. These insights from diverse
youth perspectives suggest that education can begin early to provide a forum for
social discourse necessary in democratic institutions.
Policy to Open Values Negotiation
A critical approach to policy around violence prevention education would
recognize that such programs are value-laden, and a major goal of each program
should be to assist teachers and students in examining values rather than only
conforming to them. Policy implications include, first, that open discussion about
different valuesand the circumstancesin which they apply should be an explicit and
ongoing aspect of teacher training, student work, and research in violence studies.
Children need to learn the legal and social rules of engagement in mainstream
institutions and, indeed, how those relate and do not relate to everyday social
interactions. Drawing on children’s experience can, however, make the important
point that those commonly-accepted values are open to examination and critique.
A second policy implication comes from our interpretation that curriculum-
counter values suggest the need for a context where children can speak openly
about concerns, fears, and reasoning that a curriculum designed from a mainstream
perspective may suppress. Just as children can be socialized to express racist and
sexist views or to express love and freedom values, they can be socialized to engage
in critical reflection about social issues. We argue, thus, that an implication of this
complex interplay of social values is that values negotiation should be part of the

1
00
Daiute, Stern, and Lelutiu-Weinberger
curriculum rather than treated as a precursor to it. Focusing on values in this way
thenchallengesresearchersandcurriculumdeveloperstoexaminehowparticipants
re-construct the program rather than how they re-produce it. Curricula are thus not
stable entities but subject to interpretations from participants in diverse positions
of power in an educational institution.
More action research is required as a basis for policy. Teams of clinicians,
teachers, child advocate lawyers, parents, and children can share diverse experi-
ences about hope in the face of racism, allowing, for example, a parent to require
discussions about the limits on hope in the contemporary United States, so that
her child is not made to feel responsible for the problems of society (see also
Solis; Cross; and Hertz-Lazarowitz, this issue). If public schools are not sites
for such conversations, then the need for alternatives is acute. A critical socio-
cultural model would involve all participants—including young students and their
families—in expressing, examining, negotiating, and ultimately re-defining goals
for social relations among persons and institutions.
References
Aber, J. L, Brown, J. L., & Henrich, C. C. (1999). Teaching conflict resolution: An effective school-
based approach to violence prevention. (Research Brief). New York: National Center for Chil-
dren and Poverty.
Cross, W. E. Jr., (1991). Shades of Black. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Daiute, C. (1993). Youth genres: Links between sociocultural and developmental theories of literacy.
Language Arts (September), 402–416.
Daiute, C. (1998). Points of view in children’s writing. Language Arts, 75, 138–149.
Daiute, C., & Buteau, E. (2002). Writing for their lives: Children’s narrative supports for physical
and psychological well-being. In S. J. LePore & J. M. Smyth (Eds.), The writing cure: How
expressive writing promotes health and emotional well-being (pp. 53–73). Washington, D.C.:
American Psychological Association.
Daiute, C., Buteau, E., & Rawlins, C. (2001). Social relational wisdom: Developmental diversity in
children’s written narratives about social conflict. Narrative Inquiry, 11(2), 1–30.
Daiute, C., Campbell, C., Griffin, T., Reddy, M., & Tivnan, T. (1993). Young authors’ interactions
with peers and a teacher: Toward a developmentally sensitive sociocultural literacy theory. In
C. Daiute (Ed.), The development of literacy through social interaction. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey Bass, Publishers.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Delpit, L. (1988). Other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review.
Gates, H. L. (1992). Loose canons: Notes on the culture wars. New York: Oxford University.
Guitierrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom:
James Brown vs. Brown v. Board of Ed. Harvard Educational Review, 65, 445–471.
Harre, R., & Gillet, G. (1994). The discursive mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1996). Conflict resolutionandpeermediation programs inelementary
and secondary schools: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 66, 459–506.
Lee, C. D. (1993). Signifying as a scaffold for literary interpretation: The pedagogical implications of
an African American discourse genre. Urbana, IL: NCTE Press.
Nucci, L. P. (2001). Education in the moral domain. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Olweus, D. (1994). Bullying at school: Basic facts and effects in a school-based intervention program.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 35(7), 1171–1190.
Piaget, J. (1968). Six psychological studies. New York: Random House.

Negotiating Violence Prevention
101
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford University Press.
Samples, F., & Aber, L. (1998). Evaluations of school-based violence prevention programs. In D. S.
Elliot, B. A. Hamburg, & K. R. Williams (Eds.), Violence in American schools (pp. 217–252).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Selman, R. L., Watts, C. L., & Schultz, L. H. (1997). Fostering friendship: Pair therapy for treatment
and prevention. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
Walker, P. (1998). Voices of love and freedom. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning.
Walkerdine, V. (1984). Developmental psychology and the child-centered pedagogy: The insertion of
Piaget into early education. In J. Henriques, W. Holloway, C. Urwin, C. Venn, & V. Walkerdine
(Eds.), Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulations, and subjectivity (pp. 153–202).
London: Routledge.
Weissberg, R. P., & Bell, D. N. (1997). A meta-analytic review of primary prevention programs for chil-
dren and adolescents: Contributions and caveats. American Journal of Community Psychology,
25, 207–214.
Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices in the mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
COLETTE DAIUTE is Professor of Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York. A developmental psychologist focusing on children’s
social development, Dr. Daiute has been working for the past five years on a
funded study on children’s discourse and action around social conflicts in urban
and suburban settings. Colette Daiute is author of The development of literacy
through social interaction (Jossey-Bass Publishers) and Computers and writing
(Addison-Wesley) as well as numerous articles.
REBECCA STERN is a student in the PhD program in Social/Personality
Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She gradu-
ated from Swarthmore College with a BA in Psychology. Her major interests are in
educational equity and social class identity. She is currently completing a project
entitled “The Use of Personal Experience in Understanding Marxism.”
CORINA LELUTIU-WEINBERGER is a PhD student in the Social/Personality
Psychology program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
She graduated in 1999 from Hunter College, New York, with a BA degree, where
she majored in psychology. Her main research interests concern: (a) ideology
and discourse in post-Communist Romania, as represented in accounts given by
young adults, and (b) inner-city life for youth and the functions of risk-taking.
She is currently part of a large project, conducted under the supervision of
Dr. Colette Daiute, regarding representations and understandings of conflict by
pre-adolescents attending urban public schools.