Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemPeer mediation training in the middle years of schooling( 2003)This project investigates the role played by peer mediation training in assisting students in Year 8 to manage their own conflicts and relationships a year later. The study focused on two students who underwent the training as mediators rather than the disputants. The study is based on the recognition that students in Years 7 to 9 should understand that conflict is a natural part of life and they need to be able to manage their conflicts constructively to improve their interpersonal relationships as well as their self-esteem. My experiences of students dealing with conflict had been that students often avoided the conflict, referred the problem on to someone else (usually the teacher) or engaged in destructive behaviours such as fighting or self-blame. Too often an adult resolves the conflicts, and the consequences are often punitive. Peer Mediation is a working model that is designed to assist students to resolve conflicts through discussion and integrative negotiation procedures. The School Counsellor and I implemented the program to address our concerns about how students dealt with conflict and the amount of time that teachers were spending in dealing with minor disputes. A case study methodology was chosen as the main research technique focussing on the students' descriptions of their experiences of the peer mediation training they underwent a year ago, and how they manage their own conflicts and relationships now. It was found that the types of conflicts experienced in the Middle School Years involved mainly verbal harassment, gossip and rumor spreading and relationships. Belonging to group and finding one's place was of high importance in Year 7 and usually established by Year 9. The study found that peer mediation training is a valuable tool for enabling a school to meet its duty to assist students with conflict resolution skills in situations beyond the classroom such as school camps and attending alternative campuses. The students at this School attended an overseas campus for five weeks and they felt they were experiencing similar conflicts they had in Year 7. The study showed that students remembered little about the training steps but realized the importance of problem-solving skills and effective communication to brainstorm solutions to create win- win situations. There was some transference of these skills to situations involving their siblings and friends outside of school. In order to ensure students manage conflicts in constructive ways this study recommends that school environments should provide a cooperative rather than a competitive/individualistic context. Within cooperative situations, communication tends to be open and honest, trust is built and maintained, and disputants are orientated toward joint outcomes. Furthermore, conflict resolution programmes such as peer mediation need to be integrated within the school's Middle School Years structure such as a Personal Development programme and extended into its academic subjects. The school's Student Support Services could coordinate it.