A Helping Hand? A Study into an England-wide Peer Mentoring Program to Address Bullying Behavior

Source: Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, Vol. 22, No. 3, 210–223, 2014
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a program for children and young people who were bullied or at-risk of being bullied with older student mentors.

Methods
The participants in this study were 372 mentees as well as a comparison group of 1,249 young people aged between 9 and 12 years from 22 English schools completed a questionnaire at the start and end of the school year.

The results revealed that mentored students reported higher levels of bullying and life satisfaction, and statistically significant higher levels of school satisfaction than the comparison group at the end of the school year. These outcomes did not significantly vary by the mentee’s age, gender, or the number of mentoring meetings. In addition, these findings suggest that the program was able to facilitate a relationship which made mentees feel better about school.
The improvements mentees witnessed in school satisfaction may have been as a consequence of the school context of the mentoring program. All meetings were undertaken in the school between students of a similar age with a teacher or teachers managing and delivering the program.
Furthermore, it would have likely increased interactions between mentees and teachers in their role of program coordinator, which in turn might have resulted in the developed of positive relationships between students and teachers.

Given these findings, school-based peer mentoring programs should be designed to facilitate a mentoring relationship which is focused on school and academic- related issues where teachers, as coordinators, are actively involved. This type of relationship might be achieved through the support of appropriate program practices (e.g. mentor training and mentoring meeting supervision) with the teacher being involved in all aspects of program management and delivery from referral, mentor training, mentee– mentee matching, and supervision of mentoring meetings.