**5. Conflicts and the quality of teachers' work**

#### **5.1 Socio-demographic profile of the study group**

The research was carried out in public and private pre-school education institutions (kindergartens, pre-school units in schools and other forms of pre-school education - kindergarten points) in the Rybnik commune, operating at least since September 1, 2020. The survey was conducted in the period from 09.2020 to 09.2022 with 305 kindergarten teachers and 37 principals as participants.

All respondents turned out to be women, so our analyzes did not take into account the gender determinant of the studied population. Feminization of the kindergarten teacher profession in terms of identifying and managing conflicts is crucial, as shown by global research. Women treat conflict situations more emotionally than men [43]. Moreover, they have greater abilities in interpreting non-verbal messages, and their reactions in conflict situations are more intense than in the case of men (i.e., in [44–48], cf. [49]), as in the case of commitment and striving to resolve a conflict situation.

In men, on the other hand, there is a noticeable tendency to present an attitude of withdrawal and denying the existence of a conflict (see [46, 50]). Bearing this in mind, in the case of respondents of both sexes, one should. Take into account a different approach to the problem of conflicts, as in the case of different styles of their resolution [51].

The professional structure of the survey respondents is presented in the **Table 1** below.

Based on the above chart, it can be concluded that in the case of teaching experience in the group of surveyed teachers, the largest percentage is 26.9% are educators with 11–15 years of experience, and the lowest are teachers with more than 26 years of experience (5.2%). and over 30 years of work in the profession (5.2%). It is interesting that in the group of teachers from non-public institutions there are no teachers with more than 25 years of experience. In the case of the group of principals, the largest group are people with work experience between 21 and 25 years (45.9%), of which as much as 88.2% of the total number of respondents in this period of service were principals from public kindergartens.

On the other hand, the data on the structure of the degrees of professional promotion obtained indicate that among teachers the most numerous group are chartered

*Conflict and the Quality of Teachers' Work DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111741*


*Source: own study based on the collected material. N - total number of the study group population; P - public kindergartens; NP - non-public kindergartens.*

*1 Teachers career degrees, obtained in accordance with the educational law, in force until August 31, 2022.*

#### **Table 1.**

*The professional structure of the respondents in the research.*

teachers (39.3%) and the least numerous are trainee teachers - 4.6%. In the case of principals, 77.1% are people who are charted teachers, and thus constitute 100% of managers of public institutions.<sup>3</sup> It can be assumed that the polarization of the professional experience of the headmaster of the kindergarten, resulting both from the seniority and the degree of a certified teacher, gives a greater guarantee of knowledge of the functioning of the kindergarten, the specificity of the work of kindergarten teachers as well as their needs and expectations. On the other hand, the change of perspective from teachers to principals allows for introducing innovative changes in the organizational structure of the institution, beneficial for the entire kindergarten community.

#### **5.2 Analysis of the research material collected**

The main goal of our exploration was to obtain information about the occurrence of conflicts, their causes, type and consequences for the quality of the teacher's work.

<sup>3</sup> According to educational law regulations, principals managing non-public kindergartens and kindergarten points are not required to have any degree of professional advancement, although the headteachers of such educational institutions have the opportunity to take advantage of this path of professional development.

Therefore, our respondents were asked whether there were conflicts in their teaching teams in the analyzed period. Their presence was indicated by 236 of the surveyed teachers (76.87%) and 100% of the surveyed principals. The obtained results confirm the general thesis about the universality and inevitability of conflicts in the work environment. Confirmation of the occurrence of conflicts generated a question about their type. The results of the obtained responses are presented in **Table 2**.

Based on the above chart, it is visible that hidden conflicts, both in the opinion of teachers (27%) and principals (39%), appear most often, while open conflicts constitute only 12 and 8% of indications. Hiding one's attitudes and the inability to express them in the long run may consequently reduce the quality of the professional work of the teacher and the entire teaching team. It also entails potentially negative consequences in the area of interpersonal relations between all kindergarten employees [52].

The second type of conflict most frequently indicated by the respondents in the group of teachers (17%) and principals (27%) are those of an emotional nature. The essence of this type of dispute are emotions and attitudes towards other teachers or employees who play different roles. The autogeneity of emotional conflicts determines the difficulties or the inability to solve them. It is closely correlated with human factors, which causes difficulties in determining the real cause of the conflict, as they may result from fatigue, malaise, anger, jealousy, aversion, poor reading of other people's intentions or problems outside of work. The high percentage of responses shows that emotional conflicts put a heavy burden on teachers and teams. Additionally, in combination with hidden conflicts, they lead to the compilation of difficult situations with negative consequences for individuals, the teaching staff and the entire organization. Apart from emotional conflicts, in both groups of respondents material conflicts were indicated as situations occurring in their teaching teams (teachers - 16%, principals - 9%). This type of conflicts is related to specific issues, hence it is possible to use it constructively to introduce changes within the organization of teachers' work and the entire preschool education institution. The disorganized nature of all the conflict situations indicated by the respondents indicates the spontaneity of their emergence as a result of immediate resonance. Irrational conflicts (teachers - 5% and principals - 1% of responses) were the least frequently indicated in both groups of


#### **Table 2.**

*Types of conflicts occurring in the workplace according to the surveyed teachers.*

teaching staff of kindergartens, which indicates that fictitious and false motives resulting from stereotypes, prejudices, envy and a tendency to suspect [53], constitute a small percentage of conflict situations.

The types of internal conflicts most often revealed by the respondents of the research, most often revealed in their preschool institutions, encourage them to obtain answers regarding the potential causes of their occurrence. Due to the coexistence of various conflicts and the multidimensional nature of their sources, the respondents had the opportunity to indicate more than one answer. The results of the opinions of the respondents are presented in **Table 3**.

The above data justify the statement that teachers see the greatest correlation between the disclosure of a conflict and bad interpersonal communication (11.5%), misinterpretation of the information provided (10.2%) and a complete lack of information (8.5%). In the opinion of the surveyed teachers, the overabundance of tasks and responsibilities (8.2%), the lack of teamwork skills (5.6%) and the lack of respect from other members of the teaching team (5.5%) are also conflicting factors. The least frequent sources of conflict were religious beliefs (0.1%) and non-compliance (or "bending") of the education law and regulations by the principal (0.8%).

In the group of preschool principals, the dominant etiological factors of conflicts were the misinterpretation of information (12.4%), the multitude of tasks and responsibilities (10.6%) and the inaccurate allocation of work tasks, responsibilities, powers and responsibilities among teachers (10.6%). Principals also identified as an impulse for conflict situations: poor interpersonal communication (8.3%), a low level of teachers' resistance to negative behavior of colleagues (8.3%), lack of mutual respect by members of the teaching team (7.3%) and teachers' inability to accept criticism (6.9%).

However, kindergarten principals do not see the sources of conflicts in their institutions in terms of different political or religious beliefs, an unfair reward system, insufficient infrastructure or bullying by teachers (0%). Contrary to teachers, they also do not see potential causes of conflicts in actions resulting from their own behavior, such as: favoring selected teachers, non-compliance or "bending" regulations or (0%) or bullying their subordinate teachers.

Worrying is that the respondents stated the existence of mobbing, both on the part of the principal (1%) and in the group of teachers (2.3%). This means that in the years covered by the empirical analysis, such a phenomenon must have occurred, and the principals did not notice it or do not want to admit.

The literature on the subject contains only a few studies devoted to conflicts in kindergarten, while many of them deal with potential sources of conflict in the organization. Recognizing that a preschool institution is a specific organization, we assumed that the comparison of our results with the empirical results of other researchers is legitimate and allows us to conclude that communication disruptions/ disturbances are the most common cause of misunderstandings and conflict situations. Below in this classification the following are listed: favoritism, nepotism, disruptions in the organization of work, inadequate remuneration or stressful situations, including mobbing (see [30, 49, 54–63] and others).

The research has already confirmed that pre-school education establishments are institutions involved in various conflicts within teaching teams. Therefore, the question arose whether their appearance and duration in a certain period of time conditions, and if so, how is the implementation of the didactic, educational and caring function by the teacher.

In order to obtain reliable knowledge on this subject, the respondents were asked about the possible consequences of the conflict on the functions and tasks performed


#### **Table 3.**

*Sources of conflicts in a preschool education facility.*

by them. The distribution of responses is illustrated for positive consequences in **Table 4** and negative consequences in **Table 5**.

*Conflict and the Quality of Teachers ' Work DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111741*


**Table 4.**

*Positive effects of conflicts for the teacher's professional functions.*



#### **Table 5.**

*Negative effects of conflicts for the teacher's professional functions.*

#### *Conflict and the Quality of Teachers' Work DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.111741*

The information gathered in **Table 4** leads to the conclusion that, in the opinion of 1/3 of the teachers, internal conflicts occurring in the teaching teams they create rarely have a positive impact on their didactic (34.8%), educational (34.10%) and caring (30.5%). Especially interesting is that in this group of respondents, about 20% of respondents answered that conflicts never had a positive impact on the performance of professional functions, although there were also voices pointing to the favorable impact of conflicts on their activities (didactic function - 12.8%; educational function - 16.1% and the caring function - 16.1%). The principals of pre-school institutions, however, have a slightly different opinion, because sometimes internal conflicts generate positive effects within the functions performed by teachers: didactic (45.9%), upbringing (48.6%) and care (48.6%). %). Nevertheless, about 35.5% of the surveyed principals rarely notice the positive effects of conflicts for the performance of professional functions, and only 16% that they often see the positive effects of conflicts for the performed tasks of kindergarten teachers. It seems that the positive effects of conflict, conditioning the professional functioning of teachers, should be associated with usually favorable arrangements ending a misunderstanding/dispute in the team. Certain organizational changes or clarifications between the parties to the conflicts are conducive to increasing teachers' motivation and commitment to the work they do. Based on the listed effects of conflict (**Table 4**), we can conclude that teachers rarely perceive its positive impact, contrary to principals. Perhaps this difference results from a different perspective on the perception of the problem.

When analyzing the distribution of indications of the scale of the occurrence of negative consequences of conflicts in relation to the individual professional functions of teachers (**Table 5**), principals rarely (43.2; 64.9; 64.9%) or sometimes (40.5; 29.7; 29.7%) see a negative impact on the direct work teachers perform with children. Teachers' responses indicate that they rarely see a negative impact on their teaching function (28.5%), but 21.3% of them claim that the conflict clearly has a negative impact on their teaching work with a child. In the case of the educational function, 28.5% of teachers indicated that sometimes conflicts have a negative impact on the implementation of the tasks assigned to them; as in the case of caring interactions, where as many as 33.8% indicated the negative effects of conflict in this area of work. We emphasize that while in the group of principals the extreme items of the scale (never and always) were not included in their ratings, in the group of teachers, for each of the discussed functions, there were such indications. The analysis of the distribution of the assessment of the impact of conflicts on the professional functions performed, resulting from the presence or absence of conflicts in the team, was also interesting. For this purpose, a comparative analysis of the respondents' assessments regarding the occurrence of conflicts (in the group of teachers) and their number (in the group of principals) was used, which differentiate the assessment of the impact of conflicts on the teacher's professional functions. In the group of female teachers, the analysis covered answers where the variable was the presence of internal conflict or its absence and the noticeable effects (negative and positive) on the professional functions performed by teachers.<sup>4</sup> The results of the Student's parametric *t* test are presented in **Table 6**.

The analysis proved that the surveyed teachers did not differ in the assessment of the positive impact of conflict on the performance of the didactic (p = 0.657),

<sup>4</sup> due to the unequal groups, for the analysis, Student's t-tests were performed for independent samples, while at the same time Mann-Whitney U tests were carried out to confirm the results.


*Source: own study based on the collected empirical material. n - number of people in the subgroup; M - average (medium); Me – median; SD - standard deviation; Standardized value of the Mann-Whitney test; t - Student's t test statistics; p - statistical significance, where the significance threshold is <0.05; 95% Cl - confidence interval; UL - upper bound of the confidence interval; LL - lower bound of the confidence interval; effect strength - a value specifying the amplitude of differences between averages (Cohen's d).*

#### **Table 6.**

*Assessment of conflict consequences for the performance of teachers' professional functions and the occurrence of a conflict.*

upbringing (p = 0.607) and caring (p = 0.750) functions by the teacher. Significant differences were noted for the assessment of the negative impact of conflict on the performance of these functions (p < 0.001 for the didactic and upbringing function and p = 0.001 for the caring function). In the case of the didactic function, this effect is strong (d = 1.04), and for the remaining functions - upbringing and caring - the effects are moderate (d = 0.65 and d = 0.56). The obtained results therefore suggest that teachers with conflicts in teams experienced a more negative impact on their teaching (d = 1.04), upbringing (d = 0.65) and caring (d = 0.56) functions. Than teachers, who did not declare the occurrence of conflicts (the strength of the effect was: 0.08, 0.09 and 0.05).

In the course of further research, it was checked how the characteristics of an internal conflict in the group of principals is related to the assessment of the impact of this conflict on the performance of professional functions by a teacher<sup>5</sup> **Table 7** shows the results of the tests performed.

The differences between teaching teams with a large number of conflicts and teams with a small number of internal conflicts were analyzed in terms of the impact of these situations on the teacher's professional functions.<sup>6</sup> The results of these tests turned out to be statistically insignificant. Therefore, it can be assumed that the number of conflicts revealed in teaching teams differentiates the assessment of the effects of conflicts on the didactic, upbringing and caring function performed by the teacher. At a later stage of the research, it became important to check the correlation between the diversity of conflicts and the strength of their course. These analyzes

<sup>5</sup> U Mann Whitney tests and Spearman's rho correlation analyzes were performed.

<sup>6</sup> U Mann Whitney tests were conducted.


*Source: own research. n - number of people in the subgroup; M - average (medium); SD - standard deviation; p significance at the level < 0.05; η2 - value determining the strength of the effect.*

#### **Table 7.**

*Differences in the assessment of the impact of internal conflicts on the performance of a teacher's function depending on the number of conflicts.*


#### **Table 8.**

*The impact of conflict on the teacher's functions in the opinion of principals.*

were complemented by the assessment of the impact of internal conflict on the teacher's teaching, upbringing and care functions.<sup>7</sup> The results obtained are illustrated in **Table 8**.

The summary presented in **Table 8** gives the basis for the conclusion that in the group of principals, the diversity of conflicts is positively and strongly related to the

<sup>7</sup> Analyzes of Spearman's rho correlation were performed.

assessment of a positive impact on the functions performed by the teacher - didactic, upbringing and caring (p < 0.001). It follows that the more diverse conflicts are experienced in the teaching team, the more often principals notice their positive impact on the performance of professional functions by teachers. Additionally, the strength of the course of the conflict is negative and moderate (Spearman's rho = 0.37) and the significance is above the threshold and equals p = 0.023) with a positive impact of the conflict on the teacher's performance of the didactic function. Along with the stronger course of the conflict, its positive impact on the teacher's performance of the didactic function decreases, which was clearly indicated by the surveyed principals. On the other hand, for the educational and care function, the results were significant at the level of the statistical trend. These relations are negative and weak (Spearman's rho = 0.29), with the significance above the assumed threshold and amounts to p = 0.076 for both functions). Therefore, it can be cautiously assumed that the more turbulent the course of the conflict, the less frequently the principals notice the positive impact of conflicts on the performance of the upbringing and caring function by the teacher. There were no statistically significant correlations between the diversity of conflicts and the strength of their course with the assessment of the negative impact of the conflict on teachers' professional functions (p = 0.460 for the didactic function, p = 0.328 for the upbringing function and p = 0.328 for the caring function).

The positive result for the professional functions performed by teachers can be explained using the interactive theory of conflict, assuming that the occurrence of conflicts, understood in terms of universality and inevitability, does not always have to have negative consequences.

The empirical research was supplemented by a comparison of information obtained as a result of participant observation carried out during the implementation of the core curriculum by teachers and data obtained during individual interviews with teachers, which indicated participation in a conflict that took place in their teaching teams.

Observations of the care-upbringing-didactic activities conducted within the core curriculum allowed for an examination of the quality of the professional functions performed in a situation where a team of teachers assigned to one kindergarten group works under the pressure of visible tension between them. This study confirmed not only the existence of a conflict between teachers but also its destructive impact on the course of classes (showing dislike openly in public, disturbed communication, lack of cooperation or lack of respect towards the other teacher).

Interviews conducted as part of individual case studies presented a picture of personal experiences and consequences that became the result of participating in a conflict. Individual conversations with teachers allowed for a closer look at the mechanisms of the course of conflict situations on three different levels of interpersonal relations, where the conflict involved the following entities: teacher - teacher, teacher - group of teachers and teacher - teaching assistant.

The conclusion resulting from the conducted individual interviews may be the statement expressed by all respondents that the involvement of kindergarten teachers in the conflict diverts their attention from the common goals and tasks. Over time it is responsible for the noticeable deterioration of the quality of their professional work, and in the long term also the quality/efficiency of the work of the entire pre-school institution. In the opinion of the surveyed teachers, it is these short- and long-term consequences of conflicts that require systematic improvement and replenishment of communication competences that help in coping with stress, emotional tension,

establishing and maintaining relationships with other people, resolving conflicts, building and maintaining the team spirit (in Ref. [64]).
