Tools in Network: an E-Net Approach to Sharing Mediation Competences.

Social, family and school mediation

As we said, several mediation strategies are nowadays applied to a large number of social contexts and in a wide range of conflicts with inhomogeneous purposes and operative techniques. In the following we shall only hint at those which are closest to our study path.

The different strategies and techniques of social mediation aim at developing social relations in contexts where the risk of decay of the idea of community and its regulating instruments are highest in order to manage conflict situations and restore common values and reference points shared by the community itself. This field is very likely the source of all other forms of mediation strategies and techniques and clearly shows how mediation is not only an instrument to settle disputes, but mostly a way to create or rebuild aggregation places by inviting individuals and groups to develop meaningful social interactions and find new forms of solidarity.

Family mediation has seen the consolidation of essentially two well defined approaches: the first is based on the models and techniques of family therapy, the second on legal and commercial negotiation models. The former approach, irrespective of the final purpose of each mediation process, regards a family "crisis" as a dysfunctional moment operating within a system (the family). Such dysfunctional moment may or may not cause the collapse of the whole system, but whatever the direction of change, it is important that the transition provokes as little pain and harm as possible to all involved parties. The second approach is based on the notion of marriage (in all its possible forms) as a contract with strong legal and economical implications (besides its emotional value, of course), and both parties must find the best solution out of it. Both approaches also have a deflative purpose (mediation is carried out outside the institutional justice system).

Less defined is the field of school mediation, which however has its rationale in the obvious importance of school environment for the growth of juveniles and the evolution of the role of educational institutions in our communities. Especially this latter aspect calls for the application of mediation to the several conflict elements that schools are now ready to curb and manage by themselves with a view to openness and inclusion and having rightly abandoned the past practice of "conflict expulsion". School environment necessarily hosts individuals and groups of individuals whose dynamics are often complex and challenging for school operators; that is why resorting to several mediation strategies (applied by school staff, external staff or the students themselves) can help to keep, restore or develop sufficiently harmonious relations, or prevent/solve any possible conflict. In this light, the analysis of instruments of crisis prevention and resolution, together with their application, also becomes a form of action-based education accompanying the "traditional" curriculum.