Does Conflict Resolution and Peer Mediation Programs Make a Difference for Elementary and Middle School Children?
Conflict resolution education programs provide students with a basic understanding of the nature of conflict, the dynamics of power and influence that operate in conflict, and the role of culture in how we see and respond to conflict. The programs are estimated to be in place in fifteen thousand to twenty thousand of our nation’s eighty-five thousand public schools. Several states, including Ohio, Oregon, New Mexico, and Indiana, have made significant progress on statewide implementation of conflict resolution education (Batton, 2002; Ford, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2001).
Discusses the increased use of Peer Mediation programs to solve interpersonal conflicts in school settings in the past years. Provides three distinctive models of PM programs and discusses the stages generally necessary for developing a PM program. Describes two exemplary PM programs: an elementary school model and a middle school model. Describes school peer mediation as a mode of student conflict management to be used with elementary and middle school students. The background and theoretical assumptions underlying the model are explained, benefits to students and to the school are discussed, and training of staff and student peer mediators is described. A peer mediation process checklist is appended.
Indeed, peer mediation training program was conducted in three classrooms in a Midwestern, suburban, middle-class elementary school. Prior to the training program, frequent conflicts involving teasing, playground activities, academic work, and so on, were reported. Students seemed conditioned to look to the teacher for a solution to their conflicts because they did not have the procedures and interpersonal skills necessary to manage conflicts constructively. The training program was successful in dramatically reducing the number of conflicts referred to the teacher, teaching mediation procedures and skills, and generalizing the procedures and skills to use in students’ lives outside of the classroom and school.
Concern about violence in schools has been increasing, and, correspondingly, conflict resolution and peer mediation training programs have been proliferating. These programs have been developed by researchers in the field of conflict resolution, advocates of nonviolence, anti-nuclear-war activists, and members of the legal profession. It is unknown, however, whether the programs are needed and whether or not they are effective. While there are numerous methodological and conceptual problems with the research on conflict resolution and peer mediation programs, the current evidence indicates that conflicts among students do occur frequently in schools, untrained students by and large use conflict strategies that create destructive outcomes by ignoring the importance of their ongoing relationships, conflict resolution and peer mediation programs do seem to be effective in teaching students integrative negotiation and mediation procedures; after training, students tend to use these conflict strategies, which generally leads to constructive outcomes and students’ success in resolving their conflicts constructively tends to result in reducing the numbers of student-student conflicts referred to teachers and administrators which tends to reduce suspensions.
There was a peer mediation program in a Midwestern, suburban school was examined to determine the types of conflicts that occurred, the strategies students used to resolve their conflicts, and the types of resolutions in both school and home settings. The impact of the peer mediation program on the strategies used to manage conflicts and the resolutions of conflicts are examined. The role of mediator was rotated equally among all class members. Data can be gathered over a week period before, during, and after the peer mediation training and significant difference between the types of conflict occurring in the school and in the home was found. The training had significant impact on the strategies students used and the resulting resolutions. Research should concentrate more on longitudinal analysis, there are students who are potentially affected for life, with only short-term assessments of their experiences. The need to develop ways of assessing the big questions about attainment of community, social justice, and caring environments. There must discontinue the emphasis on focusing on segments schools that have a variety of potentially synergistic initiatives. Research goals and designs should be more focused on explaining the systems and components and studying their interaction, partial, and cumulative effects. But even with the need for more research, it is clear that the programs have great deal to offer children. The evidence supports Sandy and Cochran’s conclusion (2000, p. 340) indicated that development in conflict resolution education and social-emotional learning skills is so critical to the education of children that we must actively support infusion of this instruction throughout each child’s educational experience, both in school and at home.
References
Batton, J. “Institutionalizing Conflict Resolution Education: The Ohio Model.” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2002, 19 (4), 479–494.
Ford, E. “Oregon’s SCRIP Model: Building School Conflict Resolution Education Capacity Through Community Partnerships.” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2002, 19, 465–477.
Sandy, S. V., and Cochran, K. “The Development of Conflict Resolution Skills in Children: Preschool to Adolescence.” In M. Deutsch and P. Coleman (eds.), The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Tschannen-Moran, M. “The Effects of a State-Wide Conflict Management Initiative in Schools.” American Secondary Education, 2001, 29 (3), 2–32
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