Student conflict resolution, power "sharing" in schools, and citizenship education

One goal of elementary education ie to help children develop the skills, kn owledge, and values associated with citizenship. However, there is little c onsensus about what these goals really mean: various schools, and various p rograms within any school, may promote different notions of "good citizensh ip." Peer conflict mediation, like service learning, creates active roles f or young people to help them develop capacities for democratic citizenship (such as critical reasoning and shared decision making). This study examine s the notions of citizenship embodied in the contrasting ways one peer medi ation model was implemented in six different elementary schools in the same urban school district. This program was designed to foster leadership amon g diverse young people, to develop students' capacities to be responsible c itizens by giving them tangible responsibility, specifically the power to i nitiate and carry out peer conflict management activities. In practice, as the programs developed, some schools did not share power with any of their student mediators, and other schools shared power only with the kinds of ch ildren already seen as "good" students. All of the programs emphasized the development of nonviolent community norms-a necessary but not sufficient co ndition for democracy. A few programs began to engage students in critical reasoning and/or in taking the initiative in influencing the management of problems at their schools, thus broadening the space for democratic learnin g. These case studies help to clarify what our visions of citizenship (educ ation) may look and sound like in actual practice so that we can deliberate about the choices thus highlighted.