Project
STOP Bullying – No Bullying
The project aims to support schools with effective tools and methods in preventing the emergence of bullying and in addressing it, involving students and parents as well.
What is bullying?
There is no expression in Hungarian or Slovak that perfectly translates the English word “bullying”. We mostly refer to this phenomenon as harassment at school or among peers, when the most vocal student in the class or the strongest clique regularly teases, humiliates, harasses or even physically abuses one or more of their classmates. The term encompasses all forms of harassment, intimidation and abuse. Anyone can become a victim of bullying; they don’t have to do anything. It is enough, for example, to stand out from the crowd in some way or to be new to a group with an established hierarchy. The bully typically picks out the weakest link, and who that is is often determined by prejudice.
The aim of the project
Bullying is a challenge for society and schools in both Slovakia and Hungary. Three partner organisations are working together to find a solution to this challenge. The Institute for Innovative Education, together with TANDEM, n.o. from Komárno, Slovakia and the Rogers Foundation for Personality-Centred Education from Budapest, Hungary is helping schools selected for the project to prevent bullying through training and mentoring.
We have become accustomed to the idea that teachers are the holders of knowledge and that it is their job to pass this knowledge on. This is what universities prepare future teachers for: frontal knowledge transfer. They are given fewer effective tools for dealing with the class as a community. What work is to adults, school is to children: they go there in the morning and in most cases do not come home until the afternoon. This means that they spend almost two-thirds of their active waking hours at school. As a result, most of their social interactions take place at school.
It is only natural that conflicts arise among them. The question is not whether children and young people hurt each other in their peer groups, but how we adults react to this and how we process what has happened. Are we able to help children develop routines for dealing with such situations? If adults – teachers and parents – do not respond appropriately to these confrontations, they can escalate and even turn into abuse.
The aim of the project is to provide support to educational institutions in dealing with and preventing bullying. Within the framework of the project, we will first assess the needs and requirements of the three target groups (students, teachers, parents) and then develop and provide teachers with a set of methods and tools to deal with and prevent aggression and abuse among peers. Since these interventions are most effective when parents are also involved, we would like to provide them with these tools and methods within the framework of the project. For the third target group, students, we are developing a theatre education programme to raise their awareness of the negative effects of abuse and violence.
The aim of the project is for the project partners to develop and use tools that effectively help to reduce and prevent bullying in schools. Based on a questionnaire survey of parents, the Institute for Innovative Education will develop a training curriculum for parents and teachers, a training programme, a handbook on bullying management methods and a handbook of good practices in both Hungarian and Slovak. Based on these, workshops, sessions and ongoing mentoring will be provided in the selected schools. TANDEM, n.o. will hold training courses for teachers in the selected schools and drama sessions for students on recognising and dealing with peer bullying, based on the evaluation of their questionnaire survey. Teachers are supported through ongoing mentoring.
The manuals and activities planned for the project will help parents, teachers and students learn about the causes of bullying and how to prevent it.
Project informations
Lead partner:
Institute for Innovative Education, Komárno, Slovakia
Partners:
TANDEM, n.o., Komárno, Slovakia
Rogers Foundation for Person-Centred Education, Budapest, Hungary
The project is implemented within the framework of the Interreg V-A Slovakia-Hungary Cooperation Programme. Project code: SKHU/1902/4.1/105
The project is implemented with the support of the European Union and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.
Project duration: 1 October 2020 – 31 January 2022
ERDF support for the Institute for Innovative Education: EUR 56,992.50
TANDEM, n.o. ERDF support: EUR 55,326.50
