Apologizing in Elementary School Peer Conflict Mediation

Abstract

We analyze apologizing as part of the institutional agenda of school mediation in Finland. When primary school teachers intervene to mediate a dispute, the children orient to apologizing as a ritualized, expected, and recognizable action that resolves the matter. Teachers build, step by step, a sequence that, when preconditions are met, results in the parties involved in the dispute producing the uniquely explicit apology exchange “I apologize”—“apology accepted.” We discuss the action of apologizing as involving an interdependence and tension between sincerity and rituality. Data are in Finnish with English translation.