- Teachers have been urged to resolve disagreements through direct, respectful dialogue rather than escalating every dispute to the principal.
- School administrators and HODs have been called upon to mediate fairly, address root causes of conflict, and avoid taking sides prematurely.
- Kenyan research has linked communication and teacher participation in decision-making to reduced workplace conflict in schools.
A school can survive inadequate facilities, a shortage of textbooks and even an occasional poor examination result. What it cannot easily survive is a staff divided against itself. When teachers begin treating colleagues as enemies, departments become battlefields, staffrooms become political arenas and administration offices become complaint centres. Professional disagreements are no longer settled through conversation; they are carried from one colleague to another, embellished through gossip and eventually presented to the administration as full-blown grievances. By the time the principal realises what is happening, the damage may already have been done.
This is the uncomfortable conversation schools need to have. Conflict among teachers is not necessarily a sign of a bad school. The inability to resolve it professionally is. The Teachers Service Commission has not left teachers without guidance. Its Code of Conduct and Ethics requires teachers to uphold professionalism, exercise patience, dignity and courtesy, and treat fellow employees with dignity and respect. It expressly prohibits behaviour that is abusive, belittling, threatening, vindictive, cruel, malicious or humiliating. Yet the existence of a Code does not automatically create a conflict-free staffroom. Rules can regulate behaviour; they cannot manufacture maturity. Teachers must therefore learn a professional skill that is rarely given sufficient attention: how to disagree without becoming enemies.
Trouble often begins at departmental level. A teacher feels that the allocation of lessons is unfair. Another believes examination duties are being distributed selectively. Someone feels excluded from decision-making. An HOD becomes frustrated by what they perceive as non-compliance. A colleague interprets supervision as harassment; another interprets correction as disrespect. None of these issues is necessarily impossible to solve, but unresolved grievances gather emotional weight over time. A small disagreement becomes resentment, resentment becomes avoidance, avoidance becomes gossip, gossip creates camps, and camps eventually produce open hostility, often long after the original issue has been forgotten, leaving only a damaged relationship behind.
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Research conducted in Kenyan secondary schools supports this pattern. A 2024 study in Rachuonyo South found that communication can both cause and escalate conflict but can also de-escalate it, and that assertive, non-blaming communication was particularly effective in fostering collaboration between teaching staff and principals. This should make every school pause: perhaps some conflicts do not require a disciplinary file. Perhaps they first require a conversation.
One of the greatest weaknesses in workplace conflict management is the tendency to run to authority before attempting direct, respectful dialogue. Not every disagreement between two teachers requires the intervention of the principal. Teachers are adults and professionals; they should possess the capacity to negotiate, apologise, forgive and move forward without escalating every minor offence into an administrative matter. This does not mean serious misconduct should be concealed — harassment, bullying, threats, discrimination, abuse, corruption and other breaches of professional standards must still be reported through appropriate channels, and the TSC regulatory framework recognises alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms including mediation, conciliation and arbitration. But schools must never confuse resolving a disagreement with covering up wrongdoing; the two are entirely different things.
The administration carries an enormous responsibility when conflict emerges. A principal who takes sides prematurely can turn a disagreement into a war, so leadership must resist the temptation to listen to only the loudest voice. When two teachers present conflicting accounts, the administrator should listen to both, establish facts before reaching conclusions, and ensure personal relationships do not determine administrative decisions. A good administrator does not merely extinguish fires; they examine why the fires keep starting — whether communication was inadequate, responsibilities were unclear, favouritism was perceived, a teacher was excluded from an important decision, or a leadership style was unnecessarily confrontational. A 2016 University of Nairobi study on administration-teacher conflict in Murang’a found that communication played a major role in causing, escalating and de-escalating conflicts, and that meetings were commonly preferred for institutional disputes while private meetings worked better for personal ones involving administrators.
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Much of the conflict that eventually reaches the principal begins at departmental level, which makes the HOD more than a person who checks schemes of work, examination records and departmental files. The HOD is also a mediator, communicator and relationship manager, expected to correct without humiliating, delegate without appearing to favour colleagues, listen without prejudging and enforce standards without creating unnecessary hostility. Professional disagreement with an HOD is not automatically insubordination, but it must be expressed professionally — a teacher has a right to question an instruction through appropriate channels, not a right to insult, ridicule or undermine a colleague simply because they disagree.
Every conflict also has spectators, who are often more influential than they realise. One colleague complains about another; someone responds, “You are not alone, I have also experienced the same thing”; another adds a story; someone else supplies an interpretation. Before long, the staffroom has created a character profile of a colleague who may never have been allowed to defend themselves. This is how gossip becomes institutional culture. Colleagues should ask themselves whether they are helping to solve a problem or helping it grow — a colleague who encourages two people to talk is a peacemaker, while one who collects and distributes stories is an accelerant. Schools need more bridges and fewer amplifiers.
Long before modern theories of mediation, Scripture offered a simple principle. Jesus teaches in Matthew 18:15 that when someone wrongs you, the first step is to address the matter with that person privately — talk to the person before talking about the person. This single principle could prevent many staffroom conflicts from becoming institutional crises. Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4:26–32 similarly encourages believers not to allow anger to become destructive and calls for kindness, compassion and forgiveness. But biblical reconciliation should never be misunderstood as surrendering accountability. Forgiveness does not mean ignoring misconduct, peace does not mean protecting wrongdoing, and reconciliation does not mean silencing victims. There are circumstances where formal reporting and disciplinary processes remain necessary; the Christian principle is not to hide the problem, but to deal with it in a manner that seeks truth, justice and restoration rather than revenge.
Modern education research increasingly recognises that the quality of relationships among adults affects the wider school environment. A Kenyan study on teacher-administration conflict found a relationship between teacher participation in decision-making and conflict management, reinforcing the value of involving teachers in matters that affect their professional lives. This does not mean every school decision must be subjected to a referendum — leadership still requires decisiveness — but consultation creates ownership. There is a world of difference between telling teachers, “This is what you will do,” and saying, “This is the direction we must take; let us discuss how best to implement it.” Both statements exercise authority; only one invites cooperation.
Conflict management should perhaps become part of continuous professional development, equipping teachers with practical skills in active listening, emotional regulation, assertive communication, negotiation, mediation, giving and receiving feedback, managing difficult conversations, distinguishing disagreement from misconduct, and knowing when a matter must move from informal resolution to formal reporting. HODs, senior teachers and administrators especially need these skills, since interpersonal disputes frequently land on their desks. A school should not wait for a staffroom quarrel to explode before teaching adults how to manage conflict.
There is one group that must never become collateral damage in an adult disagreement: the learner. When teachers are divided, learners notice — they see when one teacher refuses to cooperate with another, hear comments, observe factions and sometimes exploit divisions. The consequences can eventually reach teaching, discipline, examinations, co-curricular activities and learner welfare. Every adult disagreement should therefore ultimately confront one question: is the way we are handling this conflict helping or harming the learner?
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Schools do not need people who never disagree; they need people who know how to disagree. They need HODs who can correct without humiliating, teachers who can challenge ideas without attacking personalities, administrators who can listen without surrendering authority, and colleagues who can mediate without spreading gossip. They need leaders who understand that fairness is not merely making the right decision but also giving people confidence that the process was fair, and professionals who understand that apologising is not weakness, forgiveness is not surrender, and seeking peace is not cowardice.
The TSC Code provides the professional framework, research provides evidence on communication and participation, and educational leadership provides the structures. But ultimately, conflict resolution begins with character. A school cannot teach learners the virtues of respect, cooperation, empathy and peaceful coexistence while the adults who teach them are unable to practise those virtues among themselves. Perhaps the most important question for every staffroom is therefore not “who is wrong?” but “what can we do to make this right?” As Jesus reminds us in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” In schools, peacemaking should not be mistaken for weakness. It is professional maturity, it is leadership, and sometimes it is the difference between a school that merely functions and one that truly flourishes.
By Astiba Kebongo- jackiekebongo@gmail.com
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