Children spend a lot of time in school, entering interactions with other students, teachers, and other staff. It is a place of many levels of cooperation, but also of conflict and, sometimes, violent acts, particularly bullying. Bullied students face fear and feelings of helplessness and shame. They tend to bear the attacks silently, but quite often, they display their problems by changing the way they behave, which sometimes leads them to become bullies themselves.
The definition of peer violence has been gradually expanding over the last two decades. Besides physical violence it now also includes emotional, sexual, verbal, material, and other abuses of power. When (if) abuse persists for a long period of time, the resulting imbalance in power deepens the feelings of helplessness, fear and anxiety in the victim, and may cause emotional, social, learning and health disorders.
At the same time the research focus has expanded from bullying to violence in the relations between the student and the teacher, the teacher and the student and the teacher and the parent. Research has especially focused on risk factors and causes of violent behaviour in school, both primary and secondary: the peer group, family, the various identities, as well as cultural and structural factors. The resulting models of preventing violence in school try to find the answer to all the risk factors. In the last decade, it has become a widely accepted fact that only comprehensive, whole-school approach models, strategies and programmes for preventing violence are successful. New approaches have also been influenced by research of the beneficial effects of good interpersonal relations, school climate, and the detection and handling of domestic violence. The key in all such models is systemic and systematic prevention of any kind of abuse of power.
The Simona Jenka Kranj primary school has been a partner in Systematic approach to peer violence in educational institutions In this paper we show the systemic approach to the prevention of bullying adopted by the school, and its effects on the incidence of peer violence. The project has been evaluated through quantitative parameters, such as decrease in aggressiveness, changes in school climate and relations with special needs students.
Results show positive changes in the victims and the bullies, as well as the largest group of students – the observers. By using this systemic approach to violence the incidence of bullying at the Simona Jenka primary school has decreased.
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