Presentation issue 2º

When the ADIDE-Federation Board of Directors raised the function of mediation and arbitration as a monographic issue for number two of the journal, it was thought to approach it from the scope of tasks that the Educational Inspection must develop, incardinating this function between the control and advice.

As we received the articles, we realized that it was impossible to escape the current current of concern over conflicts in the centers and we saw that the concern that the teachers have today, and shared by society, for the internal problems of the educational institutions - unmotivated, disruptive, harassing or harassed students ... - and its equivalent among teachers - teachers burned, little motivated, anguished -, in short, by the problems of coexistence in educational centers. Some specific situations have reached a high degree of public notoriety through the media and an inaccurate image of the situation has been created.

For these reasons, parallel to the inspection function of mediation and arbitration, the content of the monograph decisively raises the issue of conflict in educational centers and the role that the Inspection should play, a role that is not well defined but relevant in our opinion, and that will be I need to undertake in a more technical and professional way in the future.

The conflicts that arise in the centers are resolved, as a rule, in the centers themselves, with the solution having an internal character and defined protagonists: teacher, tutor, head of studies, director. In some centers the figure of the internal mediator is appearing.

The Inspection has intervened, as a habitual action, in conflicts that exceeded the scope of the center. However, there are many questions to be asked. Is the Education Inspectorate prepared and trained to intervene, helping to favor a positive resolution of conflicts? Should the inspector be the external watchdog of the process or should he be involved in it? What role should the inspector play: mediation, accompaniment, advice? In this sense, the authors of several of the articles included in the monograph propose a more intense and effective intervention of the Inspectorate, so that it is capable of developing arbitration, conciliation, mediation and promotion of internal negotiation, both in the conflicts that arise between the teaching staff -balkanization, departmentalization- as, and above all, among the students and in the relations between one and the other.

With regard to the educational Administrations, the role that these reserve to the Inspection in the cases of problems of coexistence or school conflict is very diverse. This role ranges from that proposed by the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León through specific regulations and that developed in other autonomous regions such as Catalonia and the Valencian Country.

The editorial board