**6. Discussion and conclusions**

Conflict situations are a reality in every organization, including school and kindergarten. The need to identify and diagnose them is an important area of empirical interest, mainly due to their implications for the functioning of an individual teacher and the entire institution. Even if the problem of conflicts in an educational institution is downplayed or "hidden" by both teachers and principals, they affect the quality of teaching and the effectiveness of the teacher's work [61].

Our research oscillated around the verification of hypotheses assuming the existence of various conflicts (of different etiology and type) within teaching teams, as well as the identification of the correlation between conflicts and factors determining the professional functioning of teachers (i.e., the didactic, upbringing and caring function), i.e., the quality of work teacher's. The results of our research confirmed the common occurrence of various internal conflicts of various etiology. The results of empirical investigations have also confirmed the dependence between the occurrence of internal conflicts and factors conditioning the professional functioning of kindergarten teachers. The analysis of the collected empirical material leads to the conclusion that there is a statistically significant correlation between the conflict in the teaching team and the quality of the implementation of the didactic, upbringing and caring functions performed by the teacher who participates in it. The demonstrated dependence in relation to the quality of the teacher's professional tasks may result in reduced level of motivation to work, may also be burdened with a higher risk of errors, raise real concerns about the quality of his work and the functioning of the entire institution. The research confirmed that they are fully justified, as the consequences of the conflict lower the quality of work of an individual teacher, the team in which he operates and the entire preschool institution. They are consistent with the research results, according to which the quality of teachers' work is largely determined by the atmosphere in the workplace and interpersonal relations (see [65, 66]). Teachers who experience conflict, have negative feelings such as disappointment, insensitivity, stress, sadness, anxiety, etc., may not like their profession, have low morale and motivation, form groups with like-minded people, and have weaker results, which finds confirmation in the surveys conducted by other researchers (see [31, 62, 67]). Teamwork is extremely effective for the entire preschool community, becoming a tool conducive to open discussion from the level of various perspectives and integrating them into real solutions [68]. This is due to the fact that c*ontacts between two or more people will sooner or later come to a point where some differences in their desires, values, views and habits will appear. What is good for one person becomes unacceptable for the other*.

*Education Annual Volume 2023*
