About arbitration in general

• No conflict can be solved by sanctions or majority decisions
• Programme of mediators relies on non-hierarchical structures
• Methods have already confirmed success: those have arrived in schools all over the planet – USA, New Zealand, Canada, England and Australia
• Arbitrators = pupils and youngsters aged the same
• Ambition: to solve conflicts and problems between pupils as well as between pupils and their teachers
• Process of arbitration traces back to Thomas Gordon (1992)

Aims:   

• prevention of violence and consolidation of your own abilities
• In the centre of attention: social learning
• Democracy as a form of living

The four levels arbitrators have to face with

1) How a conversation is to be held:

• Improvement of your own behaviour during a conversation
• Training of how to speak off-the-cut
• To take an own point of view seriously

2) Coaching of classmates

• Training possibilities concerning different situations of a conversation
• Ex.: how can you complain about sth. without insulting somebody?

3) Presentations of events or specific assemblies

• how to connect personal experiences and reliabilities in terms of content

4) Mediation of conflicts between pupils

• Goal: to find a mutual agreement for every person involved

 

Course of an arbitration

• End the end there will be no loser and no winner either
• Mediators have to build up a bridge between the two opponents

1) Introduction

• Opponents are introduced by the arbitrator
• Arrange rules (ex.: hear out somebody, forbidden to call sb. names)

2) Clarify the different points of view

• Reporting the incident (both) -> argument/ dispute
• Mediator puts it in a nutshell/ comparison
• Real course?
• Find out ulterior motives

3) Finding a solution

• Opponents write down their proposals for a solution
• If both agree –> mediator notes them
• Arrange proposals

4) Record the agreements

• Mediator presents transcript
• Both opponents sign it and get a copy
• Sometimes reporting date

The traffic lights

Whom do we need to sort out our conflict?
Classification of problems:

• Red sign: heavy problems
• Yellow sign: conflicts that cannot be solved easily but which are not too heavy either  -> need help of arbitrators
• green sign: problems -> contact class representative 

Created a big project:

Project “Schlaue Eule” / smart owl

• Topic: arbitration in nursery / primary school
• Period of time: 2007 – 2009
• prevention project of school
• beginning: getting in contact with the nursery school “Groß und klein” at the educational fair in Chemnitz, March 2007; starting the project in December 2007
• cooperation between teachers/ educators, parents and their children
• includes per year one pedagogical afternoon for teachers, one parents-evening and 3 events tops for kids
• aims: overcoming of two barriers: crossing from nursery school to primary school as well as from primary school to secondary schools |education of children by other kids

measures:

• arbitrators (grade 7/8) : talk to children about personal problems concerning every day life in nursery school -> no matter if affecting playing/toys, meals, midday sleep, ...
• role plays, help by dolls, language including symbols, kids draw pictures of conflicts/ situation, portray feeling by doing handicrafts
• in school: mediators recruit other possible arbitrators, practise arbitrations

course:

• grammar school pupils visit nursery school twice: October and may the following year
• present examples of arbitration, kids: exercise to find solution -> brainstorming
• learn how to solve conflicts peacefully, become trained –> next mediators, get certificate

discernable success:

• AGC won different prizes: - Chemnitz: peace prize, Saxony: “Schule mit Idee”, participation in contest throughout Germany: “Demokratisch Handeln” = Acting democratically

future measures:

• make other schools participate in this project
• connect these schools -> bigger project