Peer education
Peer education , also called peer group education or peer group education, describes a common socio-educational work approach that was mainly used in the United States and England in the mid-1970s as a form of personal-communicative prevention in health and sex education.
definition
Peer education strategies mean the use of specially trained young people, here called multipliers or peers , to inform a specific group (e.g. school class, youth recreational facility) about a specific topic (e.g. contraception, drug use). The aim is to achieve the multiplier effect, according to which not only the trained peers inform the group, but also the members of the group who are informed in this way, in turn, pass on this knowledge in their respective peer groups, which is then multiplied within the respective target group. In this way, the previous target group can ultimately become the new multiplier, which in theory can continue.
Accordingly, peer education stands for the establishment of an offer of mutual support and help as well as meaningful influence and adaptation by peers. This is based on the assumption that young teachers can achieve greater success in teaching, as it is often easier for young people to accept content from their peers, especially since this enables them to orientate themselves more strongly towards their own environment. The multiplier defines himself less as a leading or guiding teacher, but more as a learning companion, which is supposed to create an equally weighted relationship between teachers and learners and thus enables the elementary equality for peer interaction.
The multipliers
However, before a young person can pursue his or her job as a multiplier, he undergoes special training. The multipliers are prepared for the peer education process through a combination of imparting technical and teaching skills, through professional specialists and real-life descriptions of experiences. Another goal of the multiplier training is to deal with the goals and limits of the peer approach, as well as with group dynamic problems and one's own norms and values. Furthermore, the acquisition of training strategies and leadership skills as well as the testing of methods are in the foreground.
The professional
Apart from the organization of the multiplier training, the role of the professional in the context of the actual peer education process is primarily of a controlling and supportive nature. Although the content and processes are initiated jointly, the responsibility is ultimately left completely in the hands of the multipliers and further support is only provided if necessary.
aims
The primary goal of peer education strategies is to provide information that will help young people increasingly question their knowledge, prejudices and assumptions about specific issues and possibly make a change in attitudes accordingly.
Further goals are, for example, the increase in self-esteem and ego strength as well as the development of general life skills, which is achieved by promoting social skills with the help of contact and communication training. Among other things, through the possibilities of creative leisure time, through group exercises and the demonstration of relaxation options, teamwork skills and resources for coping with stress and conflict are developed.
Peer education strategies offer the opportunity to strengthen young people in their entirety and thus ultimately to qualify them for lifelong learning and to overcome challenging situations in school, training and work.
Theoretical foundation: peer groups as an instance of informal education and socialization
Especially in adolescence, social relationships with peers represent a central reference system with regard to (partial) social integration and against the background of recognition, well-being and reflective self-reassurance. The additional influence of social networks outside of the family's reach therefore seems logical, especially the parents -Child relationship in this phase of life is exposed to numerous transformations due to the onset of independence of the young person and the associated distancing from their parents.
The relationship between parent-child relationships and peer relationships
These so-called peer groups replace the family as the central reference system in many areas, not only with regard to leisure activities, but also with a view to the cultural lifestyle and social orientation. In the course of the youth phase, in the course of completely natural efforts to become independent, young people increasingly demand more scope for decision-making, in which their parents should or can no longer rule.
Parent-child relationships and peer relationships, as the two central reference variables for socialization in adolescence, are clearly interdependent. The special position in the development of young people emerges from the special form of social relationships that prevail in both systems and that are not only geared towards certain abilities or characteristics of a person, but encompass the entire person and thus their inexchangeability and social value justify. Jean Piaget already defined peer interaction, i.e. an equal discussion with peers, as an opportunity to develop mutual understanding and moral judgment, and thus as a decisive instance of social-cognitive development. In addition to the aspects of equality and equality, other fundamental dimensions of peer interaction, such as temporal structuring and social regulation, are responsible for the fundamental structural difference in the social relationships between peer groups and family, which in addition to different spaces of experience also includes different logic of relationships and interaction generated.
Co-construction of social and cultural standards
Since peer relationships, as opposed to the family system, have the character of chosen friendship relationships that can in principle be terminated, young people themselves must take responsibility for initiating and maintaining their peer relationships. In this way, they are forced to use their interaction behavior to support and strengthen their own social identity to ensure their acceptance in the peer group. In contrast to family systems in which predefined role expectations and behavioral standards are used, young people have to negotiate the corresponding norms, rules of behavior and internal structures independently within the peer group. The American psychologist James Youniss described these coordination processes as a “co-construction” of social and cultural standards that play a central role in the development of autonomy in the youth phase.
Peer learning
Peer groups open up new spaces for education and socialization, which especially promote informal learning and the acquisition of social skills. The learning processes that usually take place in the free time of young people can probably best be described as "learning with peers, from peers". In this context, the particular effectiveness of peer relationships in adolescence is explained, among other things, by social cognitive learning theories.
According to the cognitive theory of social learning or, more simply, observation or model learning, represented by the Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura , an experienced friend can act as a model and be imitated in the context of social interaction. The social learning initiated in this way is divided into attention, memory, reproduction and motivation processes; According to Bandura, motivation can not only be aroused directly, but also indirectly or vicariously (e.g. by reinforcing or punishing the model). In this way, diverse opportunities for learning, experience and experimentation are created in the context of peer groups, which can be used to develop one's own lifestyles, norms, values and modes of expression. Here, the special influence of peer group relationships on the acquisition of social skills as well as technical and professional skills becomes clear.
Acquiring social skills
When acquiring social skills, which can include different abilities, attitudes and skills, which in turn promote the quality of their own socially competent behavior, the young person learns certain rules of behavior in the course of educational and socialization processes that are desirable in dealing with others and for a peaceful process interpersonal contacts are important. In this way, educational services in peer groups are structurally based on the form of friendship. In the non-performance-related, voluntarily chosen and usually hardly controlled by adult society, which friendship relationships in the context of peer groups offer, young people have the opportunity to practice behaviors and lifestyles without being exposed to any sanctions. In this way, one's own (social) identity can be tested and shaped.
The often non-existent close structures and mutual obligations in peer groups, however, also entail the risk of a quick dissolution of the relationship, which can only be prevented through constant negotiation and reassurance processes within the peer group. Within peer groups, the willingness to find compromises also plays an important role, for which a high degree of the ability to cooperate and criticize is required, which in turn is learned in interactions with peer group members and thus forms the basis for building and developing long-term social relationships becomes. Since rules and norms are generally not only internalized passively in peer groups, but primarily negotiated together, their own ability to argue, willingness to cooperate and empathic behavior are also developed. In the end, adolescents learn to come into contact with other people on a social, communicative and emotional level and, in a relationship constellation among equals, experience the different behaviors and forms of communication that are required to maintain a social relationship, depending on the individual.
Acquisition of technical and professional skills
In the context of peer interaction, the imparting of technical and professional skills, in which the focus is not on suitability for relationships, but rather on cognitive performance skills, is important. Many competencies are not acquired ostensibly in the context of classroom situations or family interaction, but rather go back to learning processes that are initiated through mutual experimentation, trial and error and observation in friendly peer relationships. Language skills form a possible cognitive performance which, in addition to the school context, is primarily developed on the basis of and against the background of peer relationships.
Acquiring the German language is a decisive factor for integration into adult society. For young people with a migration background, acquiring the German language in their own family context is problematic if the native language is used as the everyday language in these families. Here, informal learning in peer groups enables the acquisition of better language skills. The increased interaction with people of the same age of German origin, within the framework of interethnic friendships, has a positive effect on young people with a migration background in acquiring the German language, which is reflected not only in terms of educational perspective, but also socio-politically, in terms of xenophobia and cultural openness.
The very high effect that peer groups have in acquiring different subject and specialist skills is used successfully every day, for example in a sporting context in team sports or in the form of different teaching methods with group tasks. The extent of the educational and socialization influences that arise depends on the particular form and composition of the peer group (e.g. close friendship, clique relationships or youth scene) and the constellation of the reference group members (e.g. gender, age, social and national origin).
See also
literature
- Guy R. Lefrancois: Psychology of Learning. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-540-32857-2 .
- Patrick Saner: Peer Group Education in prevention work with young people. Term paper. University of Applied Sciences for Social Work in both Basel 2002. ( online, as of August 15, 2011 ; PDF; 230 kB).
- Marius Harring, Oliver Böhm-Kasper, Carsten Rohlfs, Christian Palentien: Peers as educational and socialization bodies - an introduction to the topic. In: Marius Harring, Oliver Böhm-Kasper, Carsten Rohlfs, Christian Palentien (eds.): Friendships, cliques and youth cultures - peers as educational and socialization bodies. VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010.
- Anna Brake: Family and peers: two central socialization contexts between rivalry and complementarity. In: Marius Harring, Oliver Böhm-Kasper, Carsten Rohlfs, Christian Palentien (eds.): Friendships, cliques and youth cultures - peers as educational and socialization bodies. VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010.
- Robert Heyer: Peer Education - Goals, Possibilities and Limits. In: Marius Harring, Oliver Böhm-Kasper, Carsten Rohlfs, Christian Palentien (eds.): Friendships, cliques and youth cultures - peers as educational and socialization bodies. VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010.
- Herbert Backes, Karin Schönbach, Ingo Büscher: Peer Education: a manual for practice; [Basic information, training concepts, methods, evaluation]; Results of the model project on behalf of the Federal Center for Health Education. 2nd revised and expanded edition 2002.
- Mandy Kästner: Peer Education - a socio-educational approach. In: Martin Nörber (Ed.): Peer Education: Education and upbringing of peers by peers. Beltz-Verlag, Weinheim 2003.
- Dieter Kleiber: Peer Education: Goals, Chances and Problems of a New Approach in Prevention Work. In: H. Reuter, P. Schwab, D. Kleiber, G. Gniech (Eds.): Perceiving and recognizing. Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Michael A. Stadler. Pabst-Verlag, Lengerich 2001, pp. 149–157.
- C. Limbird, P. Stanat: Language promotion for students with a migration background: Approaches and their effectiveness. In: J. Baumert, P. Stanat, R. Watermann (Eds.): Disparities in education based on origin. In-depth analyzes as part of PISA 2000. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006.
- H. Reinders, T. Mangold, K. Greb: Ko-Kulturation in der Adoleszenz. Friendship types, inter-ethnic and cultural openness in adolescence. In: F. Hamburger, T. Badawia, M. Hummrich (Ed.): Migration and Education. About the understanding of recognition and impertinence in the immigration society. Publishing house for social sciences, Wiesbaden 2005.
- U. Boos-Nünning: Many worlds live. On the life situation of girls and young women with a migration background. Waxmann, Münster 2006.