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Dealing with Peer Pressure
Schools can sometimes be an unpleasant place for students dealing with peer pressure. Two primary areas in which schools can discourage negative peer pressure and encourage formation of positive peer groups are in peer leader programs and in collaborative learning practices.
In order to foster positive peer interactions, schools could train student peer leaders to participate in programs that promote group participation. Examples of programs could include counseling, support groups, drug or violence prevention programs. peer mentoring and tutoring programs. By utilizing these programs, students would gain skills in the following areas:
• cognitive awareness,
• goal setting,
• problem identification,
• decision-making and communication skills.
Peer leader programs implicitly combat peer pressure as the students act as positive role models for other teens.
With collaborative learning techniques, teachers require students to work together to solve problems, answer questions, create and deliver presentations, and provide feedback to each other on individual work. When they are well-planned, collaborative activities have been shown to increase levels of academic engagement, increasing students' self-esteem and achievement. Effective collaborative learning groups essentially create new peer groups in the classroom, offering the students new patterns of peer communication and sometimes new value systems.
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