Mediation in the schools: Self‐regulation, self‐esteem, and self‐discipline

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article by Maxwell was to describe the importance of self-regulation in school-based conflict mediation. METHODOLOGY: The author employed a non-experimental research design in this study, drawing on a review of literature in the area of school-based conflict mediation. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The author argued that school-based mediation programs teach students important skills in decision-making and self-discipline. He posited that the experience of mediation is empowering for students as they learn to make their own decisions about issues that affect their lives. It was argued that this self-empowerment fosters self-esteem, self-discipline and self-regulation. Self-regulation was described as being one of the most important cognitive developmental stages of early childhood and was defined as "a childs ability to grow into an adult who can make decisions regarding his or her behavior regardless of situational pressures" (p. 151). It was argued that self-regulation is a skill that needs to be taught and reinforced throughout ones lifetime. It was suggested that an important part of teaching children to self-regulate is to have adults provide them with opportunities to make decisions about issues that affect them. It was posited that children will abide more willingly by rules and decisions that they have helped create. It was noted that self-regulation shifts the burden of enforcement of rules away from persons of authority to the students themselves. The author suggested that mediation programs provide an opportune setting for teaching self-regulation because they teach the related skills of communication, listening, and problem-solving. It was suggested that students learn to regulate their own conflicts through mediation training. The author argued that students benefit by having the power to solve their own conflicts. Findings from two pilot mediation programs conducted by the Social Science Education Consortium were cited. The goals of the programs were to decrease violence and anti-social behavior, teach students communication and conflict mediation skills, and foster attitudes favoring peaceful resolutions to conflict. It was found that the pilot program that included conflict management curriculum as well as a student mediation program was more successful than the pilot program that consisted solely of the conflict management curriculum. The conclusions drawn from this study were that students need to practice decision-making in their own lives in order for the lessons to be meaningful and relevant. It was recommended that schools come to a consensus regarding appropriate methods for evaluating school-based mediation programs. The author commented that current methods are unreliable because they are not used consistently from one school to the next, thus preventing comparisons of different programs. It was recommended that schools create suitable measures of success or failure and concrete ways of operationalizing these concepts. It was argued that qualitative data must be collected more systematically so that it can be compared across different schools and that quantitative data must include results from surveys administered to both experimental and control groups. Additionally, it was recommended that data from mediations should be collected so that schools could have records of the number of successful and unsuccessful mediations conducted by their students. The author concluded that the field of education needs to concentrate research efforts on an evaluation of the benefits of experimental learning and modeling behavior. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) Peer Relations Peer Conflict Peer Mediation Elementary School Student Conflict Resolution Juvenile Offender Juvenile Violence Violence Prevention Prevention Program Junior High School Student Senior High School Student Child Offender Child Violence Self-Discipline Problem Solving Skills Decision Making Skills Prosocial Skills Social Skills Development School Based Child Development Juvenile Development Youth Development 04-05