Peer mediation programs and conflict resolution

Education

Peer Mediation

The chase of capturing the fine distinction of the learning process has been a continuous undertaking throughout the years. Today, learning is no longer viewed as internal or an individual activity but rather as a social process. It is felt that cognitive and social processes cannot be understood by themselves. It is believed that they must be looked at together to help determine if learning is actually occurring (Dangwal and Kapur, 2009).

Several studies have been done in order to test the theory that peer mediation leads to students having better learning experiences due to the help that they obtain by working with their peers in groups. The first experiment consisted of providing computers to children in a safe, public, location for their use. The computers were placed outdoors, more often than not mounted on walls. The goal of these experiments are to try and establish a model of education that can reach out to hundreds of millions of economically disadvantaged children that live in rural and urban areas (Dangwal and Kapur, 2009).

This experiment was conducted in 1999, when a computer was placed into a wall facing a slum in New Delhi. This computer was set up so that all the children that lived nearby had easy access to it. It was discovered that groups of children, when provided with the appropriate resources, will attain computer literacy by working with each other and with minimum intervention. Research findings indicated that learning processes are located in a social context, as in peer-mediated instruction. This study clearly established that, despite coming from different backgrounds, children will organize themselves into groups and learn basic computer literacy (Dangwal and Kapur, 2009).

Another study was done to look at the effects of peer mediation intervention on self-regulated learning in regards to students with learning disabilities. This research captured both process and outcomes of peer tutoring that followed the tutors' experience with regard to the intervention program. A tutor's learning was measured by the process of tutoring and the ability to benefit from adult mediation, after they participated in the intervention and peer tutoring exercise. The sample was composed of 162 students, 81 that were from grade 5 and 81 from grade 2. Tutors were chosen from classes of children with learning disabilities and the tutees were selected from regular classes. The tutors and tutees were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The research findings found that the experimental tutors had a higher rate of learning compared with the control group. These higher rates were thought to be because of their mediation skills and a noticeable improvement in their scores between the pre-intervention and post-intervention phase (Shamir and Lazerovitz, 2007).

A third study that was conducted was done to investigate the effects of Peer Mediation on a child's cognitive modifiability. It also looked at mediators and learners in regards to the effects of the modifiability on the learner and mediator after following the program. The study consisted of a sample of 178 students- 89 mediators in Grade 3 and 89 learners in Grade 1. The students were randomly assigned to experimental groups. The mediators in the experimental group participated in the program, whereas the mediators in the control group received a substitute intervention aimed at emphasizing general conditions of peer interaction. The findings showed that following the intervention the experimental mediators scored higher as compared with control mediators (Tzuriel and Shamir, 2007).