Youth and Bullying in the UK and Japan: The role of peer support

In both Japan and the UK there is widespread concern to eliminate bullying and violence in schools and to develop qualities of emotional literacy in children. Peer support describes a range of activities and systems within which people’s potential to be helpful to one another can be fostered through appropriate training. It has grown in popularity and is now a widely used intervention in primary and secondary schools in the UK and Japan. The presence of a peer support system has the potential to improve the ethos of a school since the culture of peer support encourages people to share their issues with one another and to take a problem-solving approach to the inevitable difficulties that they encounter in the course of everyday life

 

In this seminar, we welcome a delegation of Japanese teachers, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, who are visiting London to observe peer support in action and to share their own experiences of this innovative method. We also share some of the findings based on a project, funded by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, to document peer support in the two countries and to evaluate its impact.

Contributor

Professor Helen Cowie is Research Professor and Director of the UK Observatory for the Promotion of Non-Violence at the University of Surrey. She has published widely in the field of child development, specializing in the fields of bullying, violence in schools, mental health and young people and peer support as an intervention to promote non-violence. Her publications include Peer Support in Action (with Patti Wallace; Sage, 2000) and Emotional Health and Well-being: a Practical Guide for Schools (with Chrissie Boardman, Judith Dawkins and Dawn Jennifer; Paul Chapman, 2004), and Managing Violence in Schools (with Dawn Jennifer; Paul Chapman, 2007). She has collaborated with Japanese researchers and practitioners to document the nature of peer support and to share experiences and perspectives on the role of peer support in enhancing the lives of children and young people.