Looking for Success:
Evaluating Peer Mediation and Conflict Resolution Education Programs
A workshop for the Ohio Commission for Dispute Resolution,
1999-2000
Facilitator: Tricia S. Jones, Ph.D.
Tricia S. Jones, Ph.D
Andrea Bodtker, MA
Dept. of Communication Sciences
Temple University
Philadephia, PA 19122
Tel/Fax: 215-204-7261/5954
e-mail: tsjones@astro.temple.edu or
abodtker@astro.temple.edu |
Dan Kmitta, Ed.D.
Dept. of Educational Psychology
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio 45056
Tel/Fax: 513-529-6623/7217
e-mail: kmittad@muohio.edu |
Conflict Resolution Education in the United States
Conflict resolution education (CRE) has been defined as "a spectrum of processes that utilize communication skills and creative and analytic thinking to prevent, manage, and peacefully resolve conflict".
The Conflict Resolution Education Network estimates at least 8500 schools have conflict resolution programs by 1998. Most of these are peer mediation programs, but many take a more comprehensive approach to making the skills of problem-solving a part of the formal or informal curriculum of the school.
CRE emerged out of the social justice concerns of the 60s and 70s with the work of groups like the Quakers. In the early 1980s ESR organized a national association that later led to the development of the National Association for Mediation in Education in 1984. NAME subsequently merged with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution and its Conflict Resolution Education Network. Concurrent developments were the inclusion of Law Related Education in social studies curricula; and, violence prevention efforts included in health curricula.
Contents of CRE:
A school conflict resolution curriculum or program includes certain components that are intended to help students develop critical skills or abilities for constructive conflict management.
Program Components
1. an understanding of conflict
2. principles of conflict resolution (win-win interest-based problem-solving)
3. process steps in problem-solving (for example, agreeing to negotiate and establishing ground rules for the negotiation, gathering information about the conflict, exploring possible solution options, selecting solution options, and reaching agreement)
4. skills required to use each of these steps effectively (for example, active listening, reframing, understanding, and factoring into the process the impact that cultural differences have on the dispute).
Essential Skills/Abilities
Crawford and Bodine identify six categories or skills/abilities that are essential components of all conflict resolution education initiatives:
(1) orientation abilities: values, beliefs, and attitudes which promote nonviolence, empathy, fairness, justice, trust, tolerance, self-respect, respect for others, and appreciation for controversy.
(2) perception abilities: ability to understand how oneself and others can have different, yet valid, perceptions of reality
(3) emotional abilities: the ability to manage and effectively communicate a range of emotions, including anger, fear and frustration
(4) communication abilities: active listening skills, speaking to be understood and listening to understand
(5) creative-thinking abilities: the ability to construct cognitive models and to perceive and solve problems in new ways.
(6) critical thinking abilities: skills to contrast and compare data, predict and analyze situations, and construct and test hypotheses.
Goals of CRE Programs
There are a wide variety of goals for CRE programs, almost as many goals as there are permutations of the programs themselves. But, for the purposes of our discussion, we will talk about five major goals and give examples of more specific goals within each area.
Create a Safe Learning Environment
Decrease incidents of violence
Decrease anti-social behavior that often leads to violence (harassment, bullying)
Decrease conflicts between groups of students; particularly intergroup conflicts based on racial and ethnic differences
Decrease suspensions, absenteeism and drop out rates related to unsafe learning environments
Create a Constructive Learning Environment
Improve school climate
Improve teacher/administration/student relationships
Increase the valuing of diversity and the practice of tolerance
Promote a respectful and caring environment
Improve Classroom Management
Reduce the time teachers’ spend on disciplinary problems in the classroom
Increase use of student-centered discipline
Enhance Students’ Social and Emotional Development
Develop competence in pro-active conflict management skills
Increase perspective taking
Develop problem-solving abilities
Increase empathy
Improve emotional awareness and emotional management
Reduce aggressive orientations and hostile attributions
Increase the students’ use of constructive conflict behaviors in schools and
in home and community contexts
Create a Constructive Conflict Community
Increase parental and community involvement in school affairs
Link school CRE with larger community CRE efforts
Develop more peaceful communities
All of these goals are related in the sense that each has, at its core, recognition of the importance of peaceful approaches to social interaction. However, the goals also differ to the extent that they reflect social justice ideologies. Some people believe that CRE is best used for the purposes of creating safe, orderly and constructive learning environments. Hence, their program goals reflect this orientation. However, some people have criticized the field of CRE for over-emphasizing an individually-oriented, skill building approach which fails to take into consideration larger social justice issues and underlying causative factors of conflict and violence. They argue that important goals of CRE should include the creation of communities that empower students and promote the development of tolerance that promotes social change and the reduction of oppressive systems.
Relationship of CRE to Other Fields
One of the difficulties in selecting, implementing, and evaluating a CRE program is the apparent overlap between these efforts and a variety of other initiatives. Understanding the overlap may help you decide on the kind of program you want and on the goals you are most interested in achieving. This, of course, will help clarify the focus of your evaluation process. CRE has commonalties with violence prevention, social and emotional learning, anti-bias education, and law-related education.
Violence prevention
Violence prevention (VP) and CRE share the goal of helping people realize that violence is learned and that non-violent alternatives and solutions are possible. However, there are differences:
1. VP is more limited in scope in that conflict resolution education is concerned with issues and situations beyond violence. CRE is broader in the sense that it focuses on nonviolent as well as violent episodes. But, VP is interested in violence that occurs outside of conflict situations.
2. VP tends to be more systemic than CRE, to look more at the history and environment of the violence; analyzing risk factors for violence and ways of reducing those factors. CRE focuses more on the event itself, trying to find alternatives for resolving the conflict and repairing the relationship.
3. VP emphasizes policy change while CR emphasizes individual skill building and community education.
Anti-Bias Education
Many people have argued convincingly that CRE does and should overlap with anti-bias education because prejudice may be an underlying cause for conflict and we need to realize the impact of prejudice on the school and community.
Anti-bias education probably encompasses the broadest mission of the disciplines. It not only seeks to educate people on issues of oppression, but also strives to undo social injustice in all its forms. The programs are designed to foster positive intergroup relations and promote social justice. Most anti-bias education efforts fall into one of the following four categories:
1. cross-cultural awareness: learning about one’s own and other’s cultures
2. prejudice reduction and appreciation for diversity: becoming aware of prejudices and providing cognitive skills to avoid responding in a prejudiced manner
3. hate crime prevention: providing information and education about hate crimes and their consequences for the offenders, targets, and society as a whole
4. examining the systemic roots of oppression and strategizing to dismantle them: exploring issues of power and privilege, including the way in which our institutions can change these structures.
Social and Emotional Learning
Suggests there are two ways that the concepts and tools of social-emotional learning overlap with conflict resolution education. Even when conflict resolution training is reduced to its most simplistic form, it requires students to authentically express feelings. And, social and emotional learning concepts can help students identify and understand triggers to conflict, and the importance of impulse control; and the need for perspective taking, empathy and compassion
SEL programs vary in their emphasis on the attention given to affective dimensions, but they all include:
1. some sort of initial emotional awareness/feelings assessment step followed by: identification of the problem
2. assessment of goals
3. consideration of solution
4. consideration of consequences
5. planning for action
6. means of assessing impact.
Many SEL educators are guided by the goal of fostering emotional intelligence through the accomplishment of the basic skills of self-awareness, self-regulation of emotion, self-monitoring and performance, empathy and perspective taking, and social skills in handling relationships.
Law-Related Education
Law-related education is an interactive educational approach which guides people in exploring the foundations and applications of law. Like CRE, SEL, and Anti-Bias Training, LRE helps us understand and define the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. It focuses on helping students develop sensitivity to dynamics which create conflict, to learn intervention skills which prevent the escalation of conflict, and to understand how law enforcement and other methods are applied in resolving conflict or the consequences of that conflict.
CRE Program Models
There are four basic approaches to CRE operation in schools:
1. process curriculum approach (an entree to CRE characterized by devoting a specific time to teaching the foundational abilities, principles, and one or more of the problem-solving processes of CR as a separate course, distinct curriculum, or daily or weekly lesson plan)
2. mediation program approach (trains select individuals in the principle and foundation abilities of CR and in the mediation process in order to provide neutral third-party facilitation services to help those in conflict reach a resolution)
3. the peaceable classroom approach (a whole classroom methodology that includes teaching students the foundation abilities, principles, and one or more of the three problem-solving processes of conflict resolution. CRE is incorporated into the core subjects of the curriculum and into classroom management strategies)
4. the peaceable school approach is a comprehensive whole-school methodology that builds on the peaceable classroom approach by using CR as a system of operation for managing the school as well as the classroom. CR principles and processes are learned and used by all members of the school (including parents).
Obviously, the program models differ in their ability to achieve some of the goals that were discussed earlier.
Does CRE work? Overview of Research Findings on CRE
A number of reviews have recently been written overviewing the research on the impact of CRE. In a 1996 review, the authors state that the current research indicates that:
1. These programs are effective in teaching students integrative negotiation and mediation procedures
2. After training students tend to use these conflict management strategies, which generally leads to constructive outcomes, and
3. Students’ success in resolving their conflicts constructively tends to reduce the number of student-student conflicts, and results in reduced suspensions
Since that review, the Comprehensive Mediation Evaluation Project has added to our understanding of comparative program efficacy.
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