This article concerns what have been variously called mild misbehaviours, minor distractions or emerging conflicts, i.e. situations of mild tension between the teacher and pupils in the classroom. The article responds to calls for further studies on the link between how teachers understand these emerging conflicts and the strategies they suggest…

Scholars in the field of conflict resolution in schools theoretically argued that minor distractions and disturbances are conflicts. In the present study, we refer to them as emerging conflicts. The study has been carried out within the phenomenographic research tradition and used semi-structured interviews. We addressed the professionals -- the…

This article examines episodes of potential student conflict in a Swedish special support classroom in which teachers deploy a particular type of directive in the form of a negative imperative: "bry dig inte" (Eng. "don't mind …; don't bother …"). The analyses of three such extended episodes, by use of a conversation analytic…