Journal of Adolescence 1999, 22, 433±436Article No. jado.1999.0237, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Editorial

Peers helping peers: interventions, initiatives and insights

HELEN COWIE

This Special Issue on peer-led interventions re¯ects the growing international interest inharnessing the knowledge and skills of young people to current topics of concern, not only tothe peer group, but also to society at large. Few would dispute that when young people's basicsocial needs are not met, then key developmental processes are put at risk. Young peopleneed to have affection and respectful physical contact with others; they need to be comfortedwhen they are upset, listened to with sympathy, taken seriously and given opportunities toshare feelings, including dif®cult ones like anger, fear, anxiety and bewilderment. They needto have access to educational opportunities in contexts that are supportive, that preparethem for the roles of adult life and in which there are resources to help them realize theirpotential. They also need to gain the experience of taking responsibility for themselves andothers in age-appropriate ways, and of dealing constructively with the ethical dilemmas andinterpersonal con¯icts that they will inevitably encounter in their lives.

Society too has an obligation to share power with children and young people in supportiveways that maintain a balance between ensuring the safety of the young person and providingopportunities for learning to make decisions and living with the consequences of thesedecisions. As the contributors to the Special Issue show, adults play a key role in ensuringthat these developmental needs are met. But an essential ingredient in healthy developmentlies with the young people themselves. Throughout childhood and adolescence the quality ofa young person's peer relationships, their participant roles in the peer group and their sense ofresponsibility towards their own community each have a crucial in¯uence on the individual'sconstructions of self, others and the social world.

There are cultural and social in¯uences on the ways in which society accommodates to theconcept of providing real opportunities for young people to demonstrate the capacity to actresponsibly in addressing contemporary issues for their age group. As we shall see, there arepitfalls along the way. Attempts to safeguard children's rights worldwide indicate theambivalence which all societies appear to have towards the young people in their care. Manyadults ®nd it dif®cult to delegate power to the younger generation. Attempts to mobilize thestrength of young people to resolve their own dif®culties through peer-led interventions canmeet with unexpected hostility or sabotage from adults and even from other members of thepeer group.

In this special issue on peer-led interventions we have a unique opportunity to overviewcurrent debates and dialogues in this controversial ®eld from an international perspective, tore¯ect on existing innovations and to gain insights from research and practice into theprocesses at work.

Reprint requests and correspondence should be addressed to H. Cowie, School of Psychology and Counselling,

Roehampton Institute London, West Hill, London SW15 3SN, U.K. (E-mail: h.cowie@roehampton.ac.uk).

0140-1971/99/040433+04 $30�00/0 # 1999 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents

434 H. Cowie

We begin by examining the social context in which young people can experiencesigni®cant distress in their relationships with their peers. The ®rst ®ve papers focus on schoolbullying. The authors use a range of research methods to unravel the dynamics of youngpeople's peer relationships and to scrutinize ways in which the young people themselvesmight play a part in challenging and changing antisocial behaviour patterns.

Paul O'Connell, Debra Pepler and Wendy Craig in Canada adopt a systemic modelin order to explain the peer processes taking place during bullying episodes on the schoolplayground. Like Petersen and Rigby (this issue), they found that young people areambivalent about bullying. On the one hand they report that they dislike it; on the other,a substantial minority report that they could participate in bullying a person they did not like.Naturalistic video-taped playground observations by this research team con®rmed thatthe presence of peers during a bullying episode (whether actively assisting the bullyor passively condoning the behaviour) is related to the persistence of bullying. Bullying,these authors argue, is a social phenomenon involving all young people in the peer group.They strongly recommend that anti-bullying interventions involve an emphasis onstrengthening awareness in young people that they are all responsible for the well-being oftheir peers.

Christina Salmivalli discusses the implications of her research in Finland into theparticipant role approach to bullying. She argues that the power of the peer group to promoteanti-social behaviour such as bullying can be harnessed to end it, and suggests that one keyto successful intervention against bullying may lie in the hands of the young peoplethemselves. If the young people succeed in addressing the problem, all participants, not onlythose directly involved in the bullying episodes, gain a positive experience of activecitizenship. Of course, there are potential dif®culties in ``restructuring'' networks ofaggressive cliques, as Salmivalli suggests, while still respecting the rights of young people toassociate freely with friends of their own choice. But this research suggests that the potentialfor changing the quality of interpersonal relationships in a peer group lies with the youngpeople involved, including those who normally take the role of bystander.

Michael Boulton and his colleagues, in a longitudinal U.K. study, examine the extent towhich having a reciprocated best friend protects a young person from being bullied; they alsoinvestigated the degree of con¯ict and betrayal within friendships, and the associationbetween this and victimization. Their research indicates that, over time, decreases infriendship con¯ict and betrayal predict a decline in peer victimization. The implication, asthe authors conclude, is that in the context of a reciprocal relationship, young people aremotivated to help one another against bullying; this con®rms the view that vulnerable youngpeople can, it seems, be protected by appropriate befriending interventions.

Paul Naylor and Helen Cowie report the ®ndings from a U.K. survey of teachers and pupilsinvolved in peer support systems, including mentoring, befriending, mediation andcounselling-based approaches, to challenge bullying in school. The respondents reportpositive effects both for users of the systems and for the peer supporters themselves. Theauthors conclude that this kind of intervention can play a signi®cant part in creating aclimate of care in schools. However, they also report on an under-representation of maleteachers and boys as active participants in peer support systems, with implications for thefuture development of this counselling-based form of peer-led intervention.

Libby Petersen and Ken Rigby asked students in an Australian secondary school about theincidence of bullying, their attitudes towards it, and their evaluation of peer-led anti-bullyinginterventions, including an anti-bullying committee of young people, a peer helper group,

Editorial 435

a public speaking group and a poster group. Although there were positive changes, theresearchers found a gender issue, with Year 9 boys being the most likely to see anti-bullyinginitiatives as running counter to ``macho'' values.

The next three papers examine peer-led interventions in particular cultural contexts. Eachin its own way raises important issues about acknowledging cultural diversity and on learningco-operatively from one another.

Mohammed Abu-Rasain and David Williams describe the positive impact of a counselling-based peer support system on peer relationships among the boys in a secondary school inSaudi Arabia. As the authors point out, the ethos of counselling is quite alien to the cultureof Saudi Arabia. So it is all the more encouraging to discover that peer support was viewedpositively by the young people involved, whether as peer supporters or as users of the service.Like Naylor and Cowie (this issue), these authors found that the climate in the schoolchanged over time and that the peer supporters bene®ted from the counselling-basedtraining. They also indicate the need for supportive policies in the school if suchinterventions are to develop.

Kim Elliott and Andrew Lambourn emphasize the value of peer education in the biculturalcontext of Aotearoa or New Zealand, where Maori and Paci®c Island New Zealanders areover-represented in statistics on illiteracy, neonatal death, lung cancer, teenage pregnancy,smoking incidence and crime. Peers, according to the authors, have a potentially signi®cantrole to play in education on sexual behaviour, alcohol use and issues around drugs. They canalso play a part in disseminating ideas in a way that takes account of the distinctive culturalhistory of Aotearoa or New Zealand, including grievances from the past. For example, thepeer education described in this article honoured the indigenous values and processes ofAotearoa or New Zealand by adopting indigenous decision-making methods and by givingtraining in a traditional Maori context, the Marae.

The article by Ruth Frisz focuses on the supportive skills that peer advisers need to learn ifthey are to work effectively with adolescent clients from multi-ethnic backgrounds. The peeradvisers, working closely with professional counselling staff at City University, New York,help students deal with such issues as adjustment to college, personal dif®culties and careersguidance. The humanistic programme adopts a training model that aims to develop peeradvisers with awareness, knowledge and skills in multi-cultural development. The authordiscusses the bene®ts and limitations of a programme that has been in operation for 25 years.The article raises issues that are relevant to the ®elds of peer support in particular andcounselling in general.

The next two papers investigate ways in which young people can offer one another usefulfeedback either in conversational mode or through a more structured evaluation. RichardYoung and his colleagues in a Canadian study describe how young people can offerconstructive support to peers in a reciprocal conversational mode as they consider careerchoices. The authors suggest that peer conversations provide a forum that facilitates youngpeople's understanding of their own goals and values. There are implications for adultsworking with adolescents in the pastoral curriculum. Paris Strom, Robert Strom and ElsieMoore (U.S.A.) describe the Peer and Self-Evaluation System (PSES) through which highschool students get con®dential feedback from their peers on personal strengths andweaknesses. Evaluation of the PSES has shown that it is viewed positively and perceived as asystem that enhances co-operative learning. There are challenging gender issues withimplications for the acknowledgement and development of teamwork abilities and leadershipqualities, and with potential for careers guidance. The authors recommend that teachers

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place more trust in the capacity of young people to re¯ect on group processes in order toeffect changes.

Finally, we look at peer education in one paper and two short reports. In Michael Shiner'soverview, he questions the term ``peerness'' and attempts to clarify the nature of peerinvolvement in selected peer education projects. In particular, he discusses the controversialissue of ``ownership'' with reference to decision-making and responsibility. He concludes thatproject workers in youth and community settings place more emphasis on the empowermentof young people involved in peer-led interventions than teachers. In his view, teachers actmore as ``gatekeepers'' and offer fewer opportunities for young people to participate in realdecision-making. He illustrates his argument with reference to a number of projects in theU.K. arising from the Home Of®ce's Drugs Prevention Initiative. Two short reports describethe impact of peer-led initiatives in young people's health. Gillian Turner, a consultantpaediatrician in the U.K., identi®es the distinctive role of reciprocal peer support inpromoting health awareness and in heightening self-esteem. Like Naylor and Cowie (thisissue), she advocates that peer support systems should be supported in turn by appropriateprofessional services and that the young people should have access to regular supervision andtraining. Based on their wide experience in the management of U.K. peer education projects,Sali Ann Walker and Melanie Avis outline some of the pitfalls in planning such programmes.Like Michael Shiner, they stress the need for planners to be clear about aims and objectives,and to learn from the experience of other practitioners and young people.

There is still much to learn about peer-led interventions but the contributors offer uschallenging issues for consideration. They suggest that bullying is a social phenomenoninvolving all members of a community, and they identify gender issues in young people'sattitudes towards vulnerable peers. They ask us to take account of gender and culture whendesigning and implementing anti-bullying interventions. They highlight dif®culties on thepart of adults in sharing power with young people, and they recommend that we take accountof the social context when planning peer-led interventions. Of course there are dangers inadopting such methods without adequate preparation and support, as the contributors pointout. But what stands out in this Special Issue is the enormous potential that peer-ledinterventions have for deepening our awareness of interpersonal relationships andilluminating controversial aspects of our life in contemporary society.