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Challenges
and Benefits of Peer Education Programs
If you are
considering a peer education program (or adding peer education to an existing
program), some challenges you can expect are:
- Maintaining quality and sustaining the intervention may be harder
than with adult educators. For one thing, peers (by definition) age
out of their target group within a few years, so programs must continually
train new teams of peer leaders. That may not be the case (or at least
not as frequently) with adult leaders. For other reasons — maturity,
experience, and being part of a high-risk group, for example —
peers may need more supervision than adults, which can affect program
quality.
- Logistics can be tricky. If peer leaders are in school, working around
school and extracurricular schedules can be limiting. In addition to
scheduling problems, there may also be transportation and liability
issues to consider.
- Peers from the same high-risk group may not model positive behaviors,
or may not model them consistently. The transition from risky behaviors
to maintenance of healthier behaviors can be rocky and full of relapses.
Placing peers in a position where they are asked to consistently model
healthier behaviors may be asking a lot.
- Maturity matters. Some peer roles — particularly as counselors
or advisors — may require a maturity and judgment that many adolescents
do not yet possess. Likewise, other job demands — i.e., knowing
when to refer someone who needs professional help or maintaining confidentiality
— are difficult tasks for many adults and may be even more difficult
for adolescents.
These challenges,
while significant, do not necessarily outweigh the many benefits of peer
education programs:
- Peer
education is a rare opportunity for young people to develop and sustain
leadership and facilitation skills that will serve them well in both
the short-term and the long-term.
- Peer
educators model positive youth behavior, affecting social norms, as
well as model constructive relationships between adults and young
people — qualities which are all too rare in our society.
- In
some situations, such as discussing sex or the nuances of teen culture,
peers can achieve a level of comfort and trust that is difficult for
adults to match.
A recent
ReCAPP forum on HIV prevention and sexuality education programs that work
included a spirited discussion about the relative merits of peer vs. adult
facilitators in sexuality education curricula. Both curriculum designers
and those in the field who used these programs agreed that the best way
to minimize challenges and play to the strengths of peer education was
to match adults and peers in co-facilitated programs, bringing forth the
best from each. For the full discussion, please visit ReCAPP's online
summary of the Programs That
Work forum.
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