Peer Mediation

What is it about?

LawWorks is piloting a new project which would enable its legal mediators to help train school pupils in the skills of mediation.

In March 2009 a seminar was held to help explain what this might involve and explore with LawWorks mediators what would be practicable.  Podcasts of this seminar can be downloaded or viewed directly, below.

Janine Edge, who led the seminar, has recently carried out research in New Zealand where they have been teaching peer mediation for over 18 years. Janine has also observed the work of the Peace Foundation there, which has introduced peer mediation schemes in over two thirds of the schools.

Since March, Janine got together with a few other volunteer to design a course that could be delivered in schools.  The pilot has now begun and the first presentation was completed in September 2009.

Why is it important?

Peer mediation schemes have been found to be hugely beneficial to schools, both in the UK and in other countries. Not only do they have the obvious benefit of reducing school bullying and conflict, but also give pupils invaluable life skills.

While there are already organisations establishing peer mediation in the UK (Transforming Conflict and Leap Confronting Conflict, to mention two), it is still in a very small proportion of schools. If legal mediators were to help in teaching peer mediation, they would be providing an important service to the community and incidentally be raising awareness amongst the young of developments in the legal profession.

Audio Files (MP3 format)*

Short introduction by Lavinia Shaw-Brown, Project Manager for LawWorks Mediation

Part 1

At this point a DVD (provided by the Peace Foundation in New Zealand) was shown of school children role playing mediations.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Additional Files*

PowerPoint

The audio files vary in size but Parts 2, 3 and 4 range from 10Mb to 16Mb.