Peer Mediation and Negotiation
Peer mediation programs train students to act as impartial third parties who help fellow students negotiate peaceful resolutions to their conflicts. Structurally, peer mediation programs vary in how they are linked with academic content and with other CRE components.
In cadre peer mediation, mediators are trained outside of classes and mediate disputes after class time. In curriculum or class-linked peer mediation, students have classes in integrative negotiation and simple mediation process skills, rotate as mediators, and conduct mediations in class. Mentoring peer mediation models involve student mediators training younger students as peer mediators within the same school or across educational levels in the same district. Peer mediation is one of the oldest and most common CRE programs in the United States and around the world (Jones, 2004a; Turnuklu, Kacmaz, Sunbul, & Ergul, 2010).Cadre Peer Mediation. Cadre peer mediation positively affects students’ conflict competence. Johnson and Johnson’s (1996) comprehensive research review focused on peer mediation programs in a cooperative learning context and found increases in students’ conflict knowledge, self-reported prosocial behavior, and negotiation skills and positive impacts on classroom climate. Burrell, Zirbel, and Allen’s (2003) meta-analysis of 43 studies (published between 1985 and 2003) shows that peer mediation increases students’ conflict knowledge and skills, improves school climate, and reduces negative behavior. Mediators in middle school cadre programs, when compared with nonmediators, increased their knowledge of constructive conflict (Bell, Coleman, Anderson, Whelan, & Wilder, 2000) and their selfesteem and self-concept—even for aggressive students (Fast, Fanelli, & Salen, 2003).
The impact of peer mediation on critical skills like perspective taking has received considerable research attention.
Mankopf (2003) hypothesized that mediators would have better perspective taking, negotiation ability, attitudes toward fighting, and connectedness to school and family than nonmediators and that mediators who mediated more would demonstrate greater developmental gains. He found that mediators did score higher on perspective taking and negotiation ability, although experience did not play as much of a factor as anticipated. In two studies, Pamela Lane-Garon studied the impact of peer mediation on cognitive and affective perspective taking of mediators and disputants in Grades 4 through 8. In Lane-Garon’s (1998) first study, both mediators and disputants showed a significant increase in cognitive and affective perspective taking, but mediators’ scores were significantly higher than disputants. In a second study, Lane-Garon (2000) examined the impact of peer mediation on cognitive perspective taking, strategy choice, and school climate and found significant increases in mediators’ perspective taking and selection of problem-solving conflict strategy. Potts (2002) examined the impact of mediation on interpersonal negotiation strategies (a measure of perspective taking and social problem solving) and found that mediators demonstrated higher levels of interpersonal negotiation strategies, and more experienced mediators had the highest levels.Class-Linked Mediation. The Teaching Students to be Peacemakers Program (TSPP) developed by David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota creates a cooperative learning context, instructs students in integrative negotiation and mediation skills, and uses in-class peer mediation sessions. Johnson and Johnson (2001) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies examining TSPP effectiveness in two countries. Students, from K to 9, learned the conflict resolution procedures, retained their knowledge throughout the school year, applied the knowledge to actual conflicts, transferred skills to nonclassroom and nonschool settings, and used the skills similarly in family and school settings.
The Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP) program was developed for urban middle schools that serve predominantly African American students. RIPP is a social-cognitive conflict education curriculum, with problem-solving and peer mediation components (Farrell, Meyer, Kung, & Sullivan, 2001). In one evaluation of RIPP with sixth graders at three urban middle schools, students were randomized to intervention (n = 321) and control groups (n = 305). RIPP participants had fewer disciplinary violations and in-school suspensions than control students—an impact that lasted for 12 months after program implementation (Farrell, Meyer, & White, 2001). In one middle school, students who participated in RIPP-6, as compared with control students, reported lower approval of violent behavior, more peer support for nonviolent behaviors, less peer pressure to use drugs, and lower posttest frequencies of physical aggression, drug use, and peer provocation (Farrell, Valois, & Meyer, 2002).
Mentoring Peer Mediation. In a peer mediation mentoring model, older student mediators train younger students to be mediators. Bickmore (2002) evaluated 28 urban elementary schools using high school mediators to train elementary mediators and collected data on younger mediators’ understanding of conflict, attitudes toward conflict, perceptions of school climate, attendance rate, suspensions, and academic achievement. Peer mediation had significant positive results for mediators’ understanding of conflict and perceptions of school climate. Suspension rates decreased and academic achievement increased in schools with mediation programs. Lane-Garon and Richardson (2003) reported on a cross-age mentoring mediation program in which university students served as mentors to elementary school mediators; peer mediation training increased elementary school mediators’ cognitive and affective perspective taking and perceptions of school climate, especially in the area of perceived school safety.
Comparative Research in Peer Mediation Programs. The Comprehensive Peer Mediation Evaluation Project (Jones et al., 1997) involved 27 schools in three communities (Philadelphia, Laredo, and Denver) in a 3 ? 3 design that compared peer mediation cadre, curriculum-linked, and control schools across elementary, middle, and high school levels. Data were collected over 2 years from 430 peer mediators, 5,400 control students, 1,400 conflict-training students, and 1,225 teachers/administrative staff. Exposure to peer mediation programs, whether cadre or class- linked, had a significant impact on students’ conflict attitudes and behaviors. Exposure to peer mediation reduced personal conflict and aggressiveness and increased the tendency to help others with conflicts, prosocial values, perspective taking, and conflict competence.
Negotiation and General Conflict Curricula. DuRant, Barkin, and Krowchuk (2001) studied a negotiation skills curriculum used with low-income, minority sixth graders in four middle schools (treatment n = 292; control n = 412). Students were taught interest-based negotiation skills and problem solving. From pretest to posttest, there was a decrease in the use of violence by students in the intervention group and an increase in the use of violence in the control group. Heydenberk, Heydenberk, and Bailey (2003) implemented Project Peace, a teacher- delivered CRE program in fourth- and fifthgrade classes, and evaluated the impacts on students’ moral reasoning and attitudes about conflict. All treatment classrooms showed significant increases in moral reasoning ability and constructive conflict orientation. Studying conflict resolution in younger students, Heydenberk and Heydenberk (2007) compared SEL and CRE curricula in kindergarten and first-grade students and found that the CRE curriculum with more problemsolving emphasis was superior in helping students manage conflict. In a 2-year study of the impact of a conflict education curriculum in middle and high school special-needs students (in an alternative disciplinary school), researchers found that the conflict curriculum significantly decreased students’ misconduct rates, hostile attribution, and aggressive orientation when compared with control students (Jones & Bodtker, 1999a).