Developing and testing a scale to assess teachers' attitudes toward peer mediation of student disputes

Abstract

We developed and tested a scale to assess teachers' attitudes toward the use of peer mediation to resolve disputes between students. Participants were 373 randomly selected teachers at North Cyprus elementary schools. Contextual validity was determined based on the opinions of specialists in the fields of psychology and counseling, curriculum development, positive psychology, and peer mediation, and also Turkish language specialists. The results of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis determined the final version of the 2-dimensional 13-item Scale of Teachers' Attitudes Toward Peer Mediation. We assessed the internal consistency of the scale with Cronbach's alpha and the split-half method. Validity and reliability tests yielded satisfactory results, indicating that the scale can be used in the field of training in peer mediation.