Browsing by Author "Sonninen, Sara"

The aim of this study is to find out what kind of operating models schools use in the work against school bullying and how these operating models have worked. In addition, the goal is to find out how the teaching staff defines direct and indirect bullying and what is bullying like today between students. School bullying is an unfortunately current social problem, which makes its studying even more important. The aim of this study is to bring out operational models used in schools, which other schools could use in their own anti-bullying operational model, and to increase awareness of the forms of bullying between students, so that they can pay better attention to them. This study was conducted as a qualitative study. The research material was acquired through semi-structured interviews, in which a total of six (6) teaching staff members from three different schools participated. The material was analyzed by data-driven content analysis. The schools that participated in the study found similar and versatile operating models against bullying. The results were structured into actions to prevent bullying, actions to intervene in bullying and actions to follow up on bullying. Bullying can be prevented for example, by continuous grouping, learning emotional and interaction skills and positive pedagogy. Bullying is initially tackled by talking to the parties, and if the situation is not resolved, the case is transferred to various anti-bullying teams for investigation. In the intervention, other means were also used, such as cooperation with other school staff. In each school, the actual end of bullying was also followed up with follow-up meetings and discussions. The results of the study also showed that the KiVa Koulu program was mainly considered a functional and useful part of anti-bullying work. Detecting and intervening in indirect bullying between students was perceived as challenging. Bullying was found to happen more indirectly than directly. The results also highlighted concern about the increase in social media bullying and the means to detect and prevent it were felt to be few.