Conflict is present in all human relationships and societies. Throughout history, fighting has been more notable than peacemaking. Only recently have conflict resolution studies entered the mainstream of academia. Since peace is no longer an option, but a necessity, educators must become actively engaged in promoting the importance of peacemaking skills among their students. In 1986, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution funded a study of conflict resolution in higher education. Results disclosed a proliferation of courses but little about their quality. The present study evaluates the status of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the curricula of three major universities in North Texas and compares it with results from four other universities which were reported to have the heaviest concentration of ADR courses. A questionnaire was constructed to collect data in the following areas: place, significance of ADR in contemporary curricula, important factors determining attitudes toward ADR, and expectations/aspirations of faculty concerning teaching of ADR. Using a Likert scale, attitudes toward ADR were measured through regression analysis. Four of seven independent variables (age, sex, political orientation, and ADR training) were significant at jd = .05. Forty ADR-related courses were identified in seven universities. The concentration of ADR courses was management …

This is a descriptive study of the statistical association between the amounts of financial—emotional supports available and their impact on the degree of difficulty in the performance of the parental roles of a nonrandom sample of eighty-six Mexican-American female single parents from McAllen, Texas. The sample was divided into four socioeconomic status categories. A total of twenty-nine variables were correlated: twenty independent, financial-emotional and nine dependent parental performance variables. The twenty variables were defined in terms of socioeconomic resources: child-care availability and satisfaction, nature of personal/children problems, and frequency of interaction with significant others defined emotional supports. Parental role performances were defined in terms of having children with medical, learning or emotional problems, and the degree of difficulty in caring for sick children, spending time with them, yelling and screaming, use of corporal punishment and feeling overwhelmed by parental demands. Analyses indicated that these families functioned in a stable and viable manner, with little evidence of disintegration or "pathology." The parents had extensive social networks comprised of kin# coworkers, and friends, and they interacted with these support people on a regular basis, usually several times per week, but at the same time the parents rarely interacted with the ex-husbands or …