School-wide conflict resolution and peer mediation programs: Experiences in three middle schools

Effective school-wide responses to disruptive, aggressive, and violent student behaviors are critical to ensuring teacher and student safety and to increasing constructive approaches to conflict. As such, many educators are implementing school-based prevention programs focused on conflict resolution and peer mediation (CR/PM). In this article, we share our experiences with a project designed to investigate the effectiveness of a school-wide conflict resolution curriculum and peer mediation program. After a brief theoretical framework for teaching conflict resolution, we describe the project and what facilitated successful implementation; then we summarize how middle school students responded to the CR/PM program.