Apologizing in Elementary School Peer Conflict Mediation

We analyze apologizing as part of the institutional agenda of school mediation in Finland. When primary school teachers intervene to mediate a dispute, the children orient to apologizing as a ritualized, expected, and recognizable action that resolves the matter. Teachers build, step by step, a sequence that, when preconditions are met, results in the parties involved in the dispute producing the uniquely explicit apology exchange "I apologize"-"apology accepted." We discuss the action of apologizing as involving an interdependence and tension between sincerity and rituality. Data are in Finnish with English translation.