TOPIC: Peer Relationships and Peer Counseling

The following reflects our most recent response for technical assistance related to this topic. This list represents a sample of information to get you started and is not meant to be exhaustive.
(Note: Clicking on the following links causes a new window to be opened. To return to this window, close the newly opened one.)

Center Developed Documents, Resources and Tools

Center Practice Brief

• Schools as Caring, Learning Communities

Introductory Packet

• Social and Interpersonal Problems Related to School Aged Youth
• Transitions: Turning Risks into Opportunities for Student Support

Newsletter

• Promoting Youth Development and Addressing Barriers

Practice Notes

• Natural Opportunities to Promote Social-Emotional Learning and MH
• Supporting Successful Transition to Ninth Grade
• Welcoming Strategies for Newly Arrived Students and Their Families

Resiliency

• Protective Factors (Technical Assistance Sampler)

Quickfinds

• Social Skills
• Tutoring
• Mentoring
• Bullying

Technical Aid Packet

• After-School Program and Addressing Barriers to Learning
• School-Based Mutual Support Groups
• Volunteers to Help Teachers and Schools Address Barriers to Learning
• Welcoming and Involving New Students and Families

Net Exchange

• Peer Programs

Relevant Documents, Resources, Tools on the Internet

• Assessing the Quality of Youth Peer Education Programmes
• Bully-Proof: A Teachers' Guide on Teasing and Bullying for use with Fourth and Fifth Grade Students
• Classwide Peer Tutoring
• Cross-Age Teaching
• Early Adolescence: A Review of the Literature (please refer to the chapter on social development) (pdf document):
• Deviant Peer Influences in Intervention and Public Policy for Youth
• Loneliness in Young Children
• Peer-Assisted Learning
• Peer Initiation Strategies for Students with Autism
• Peer Mentoring Network
• Peer Support: An Elementary Approach
• Peer Support/Peer Provided Services: Underlying Processes, Benefits, and Critical Ingredients
• Positive Peer Pressure: A Transition Perspective
• School-Wide Peer Helping: Peer Helping Changes School Climate
• Structuring for Success: Link Crew
• The Performance of At-Risk Youth As Tutors
• Teenagers as Teachers Programs
• What Works Clearinghouse: Peer-assisted Learning

• A Centralized Approach to Training Peer Counselors: Three Years of Progress
• Curriculum Guide for Student Peer Counseling Training
• Effects of An Elementary School Peer Facilitator
• Evaluation of Peer Helper Programs
• Maternal, Teacher, and Child Care History Correlates of Children's Relationships with Peers
• The New Peer Pressure
• Peer Counseling Community Resource Book January 1990
• Peer Counseling Consultants at San Gabriel High School
• Peer-Mediated Training of Cooperative Play Between Special and Regular Class Students in Integrated Play Settings
• Prevention of Adolescent Problems
• Project K.I.C.K., A School-Based Drug Education Research Project - Peers, Parents, and Kids
• Promoting Social and Emotional Learning
• Protective Process in Adolescence: Matching Stressors with Social Resources
• A Review of Selected School-Based Conflict Resolution and Peer Mediation Projects
• A Series of Solutions and Strategies: Resolving Conflict Through Peer Mediation

• About Our Kids (New York University, Child Study Center)
• The National Peer Helpers Association
• Peer Resources Document Archive

• "Child Behaviors Leading to Peer Rejection: A View from the Peer Group" by Gregory Waas and Patricia Graczyk (1999). In: Child Study Journal, 29(4): 291-306.
• "Children without Friends: Implications for Practice and Policy" by Beth Doll (1996). In: School Psychology Review, 25(2): 165-83.
• "Peer Support and Young People's Health" by Gillian Turner (1999). In: Journal of Adolescence, 22(4): 567-72.
• "Poor Social Skills Are a Vulnerability Factor in the Development of Psychosocial Problems" by Chris Segrin & Jeanne Flora (2000). In: Human Communication Research, 26(3): 489-514.
• "Second Step: Preventing Aggression by Promoting Social Competence" by Karin Frey, Miriam Hirschstein,  & Barbar Guzzo (2000). In: Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 8(2): 102-12
• "Social Interactions and Peer Support for Problem Behavior" by Thomas Farmer & Thomas Cadwallader (2000). In: Preventing School Failure, 44(3): 105-09.
• "Social Relationships and Motivation in Middle School: The Role of Parents, Teachers, and Peers" by Kathryn Wentzel (1998). In: Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(2): 202-09.
• "The SOS Club: A Practical Peer Helper Program" by Janne Scarborough (1997). In: Professional School Counseling, 1(2): 25-28.
• "The Effectiveness of Peer Support Systems in Challenging School  Bullying: The Perspectives and Experiences of Teachers and Pupils" by Paul Naylor & Helen Cowie (1999). In: Journal of Adolescence, v22(4): 467-79.

We hope these resources met your needs. If not, feel free to contact us for further assistance.For additional resources related to this topic, use our search page to find people, organizations, websites and documents.  You may also go to our technical assistance page for more specific technical assistance requests.

If you haven't done so, you may want to contact our sister center, the Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

If our website has been helpful, we are pleased and encourage you to use our site or contact our Center in the future.  At the same time, you can do your own technical assistance with "The fine Art of Fishing" which we have developed as an aid for do-it-yourself technical assistance.