Difficulties Conflicting Students Face During Mediation from Peer Mediators’ Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the difficulties conflicting students encountered during mediation process as identified by peer mediator students. The study utilized semi-structured interview technique. Interview forms were used as data collection instrument and 45 peer mediators (24 females and 21 males) were interviewed. Results of the study indicated that conflicting students had certain types of difficulty in various areas while completing the five steps of the mediation process. The most prevalent of them was the difficulty and inability of the disputants to express their needs-reasons and their emotions-reasons. Similarly, mediator students also observed a certain level of emotional resistance by the conflicting students at this step. Thus, conflicting students either failed or showed resistance when attempting to look at the issue from the other‟s perspective or empathize with them. As a direct result of this, conflicting students also experienced some difficulty in presenting solution alternatives and either failed to arrive at a solution or came up with self-serving ones. Furthermore, particularly male peer mediator students expressly stated that conflicting students had some difficulty in the last step of reaching an agreement.