Peace Works

Peace Works is a curriculum that teaches students the dispositions, behaviors, and skills necessary to peaceably resolve conflict. The model contains grade-specific, classroom-tested curricula for prekindergarten through 12th grade. There also is a peer-mediation training component for grades 4-12. The curriculum content has six essential components: 1) communication building, 2) rules for fighting fair, 3) understanding conflict, 4) the role of perceptions, 5) anger management, and 6) effective communication. The curriculum methodology is to model, teach, coach, encourage, and export. (Exporting involves having the more advanced students coach the less experienced; this is also peer mediation).

The goals of Peace Works are to (1) promote students' prosocial behavior through the use of conflict resolution; (2) enhance school climate through caring and support; (3) teach parents constructive problem solving and anger management; and (4) improve parents' positive affiliation with school.

A mixed methods research design, using parallel quantitative and qualitative methodologies, was employed to evaluate Peace Works. The participant schools were selected by the Miami-Dade school district and were randomly selected as treatment or control schools. Preliminary results suggest that the curricula improved conflict resolution behavior in students and support the hypothesis that, when implemented properly, conflict resolution projects are useful and benefit the classroom setting:

Aggressive behavior- In the elementary microlevel classes, there was a significant reduction in total antisocial behavior and in hostile/irritable behavior for one of the two classrooms. This finding did not extend to the whole school, however, suggesting that implementation was an issue.

Antisocial behaviors- In the middle school classes, SSBS antisocial results indicated a significant reduction in demanding/disruptive behavior. In the same classroom, there was a reduction that approached significance in antisocial behavior in the 1st year and reached significance in the 2nd year.