Effectiveness of conflict managers in an inner-city elementary school

The effectiveness of an inner-city peer mediation program was examined. Forty-seven 3rd- and 4th-grade students in a prekindergarten to 4th-grade elementary school were trained as conflict managers to mediate schoolmates' conflicts. The training consisted of 1 1/2 days of training in communication, assertiveness, and mediation skills. The students mediated 323 conflicts during the academic year, Eighty-seven percent of the conflicts brought to mediation concerned relationship problems involving physical attacks (43%) and verbal attacks (42%). The strategies students most commonly used were physical force (40%) and verbal force (51%). Mediation most commonly resulted in an agreement to avoid each other in the future (84%). There were no significant differences among male-male, female-female, and male-female conflicts, although male-female conflicts were relatively nonexistent in these young children.