Sustaining Peer Mediation: Remaining Challenges and Opportunities for Peace Educators

This chapter explores the challenges and opportunities shaping the reality of peer mediation programs today, as they continue to form the bulk, at least in the USA, of peace education. It focuses on the apparent difficulty of sustaining peer mediation and other peace education programs, as research suggests that remains a significant challenge for practitioners. The chapter explores mediation as an organic, interpersonal process, involving an often professional third party, whereby individuals or groups in conflict, dialogue about the sources of the conflict and creatively develop solutions. Relevance may also be questioned when programs are too narrowly conceived, capable of only addressing small interpersonal conflicts. Relatedly, some research has attempted to understand the broader context of school-based conflicts by examining bystanders. Like the rest of the public sector, public K-12 schools today operate in a neoliberal context of budget austerity. Resources are always a question of public priorities, and thus always a political question.