Dealing with conflicts

Hi everybody,

We are going to explain the issue of bullying, more concretely bullying in schools and teacher’s role above this fact. Dan Olweus, one of the first researchers who studied this subject, defines bullying (abuse among students) as a conduct of physical persecution and/or psychological from a student against another. These actions, negative and intentional, place the victim in a position which he or she couldn’t easily get out on their own. This situation creates in the victim anxiety, depression…, which bring to the person difficulties to follow the class, because they can not feel like they form part of it.

Comes off from these definition three characteristics:

1) There is an imbalance (abuse) of power.

2) There is a repetition of incidents over time.

3) There is intentionality on the part of the aggressor or aggressors.

To these three characteristics we have to add another one:

It is a group fact, not an individual fact.

It is not based on organized events where they search for the common hurt, but it involves the whole class. It is a victimizing process. This process could be a little difficult to identify, mostly because at first it isn’t visual and the majority of teachers can’t see it, but it is well known by the students.

The only way to combat bullying in schools is cooperation among all who are involved: teachers, parents, students, non-teaching staff... Any school activities designed to improve interpersonal relationships within the educational community is a good practice. Awareness and adult involvement are basic components to the success of any intervention program. The intervention proposed by Dan Olweus is based on the following aspects and intentions:

1. Not blaming approach (aims to get responsibility)

2. Systemic perspective (also involved the group to modify these interactions)

3. Strategic (situation analysis, planning, and a brief and structured intervention)

4. Fostering resilience (resolve the situation positively for all the involved)

Having worked about this, we realized that if we want to be good teachers, we must act properly in facts related  with bullying, to make this situations do not occur.  It is necessary to remember that today, computers, social networks and mobile phones play an important role in this overview because they have become a means to carry it out. Everybody will agree that Internet is a world wide with its advantages, disadvantages and especially its risks. Risk situations such as "grooming" or cyberbullying. Data such that 20% of children in the United States suffered cyberbullying, according to a survey of 4,400 students in 2010, or the fact that in the same survey 10% of children admit that they have used Internet to harm a partner, have been recognized both as bullies harassed, or that 44 % of children in Spain had felt sexually harassed on Internet at some point in 2002, help us get an idea of the severity of the problem. So to prevent them from becoming future victims or bullies we need as teachers a minium knowleg about Internet. Also as future teachers, we must remember that Internet is a very powerful tool and we must train our students to be critical. So we must carry out an intervention not just be spectators of this event, this intervention must be also made by parents and classmates, we all have to do a networking if we want to solve this out.

Links of interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc&hd=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV2ssT8lzj8

http://www.stopbullying.gov/

Andrea Moros and Gemma Oriol.