Kaunas Education Innovation Centre staff 2023 29 January – 2 February visits Reggio Emilia (Italy) The project partners Progetto Crescere presented the issues of bullying, the prevention programmes in place and the methods used to tackle bullying in Italy. Progetto Crescere is a social cooperative of educational and health services, made up of a team of professional paediatric neuropsychiatrists, psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists, educators, speech and language therapists, and neuropsychomotor and psychomotor therapists.
The visit to Emilia Reggio put a strong emphasis on hands-on activities. Italian partners presented tools used to tackle bullying:
- Moreno’s sociogram is a study of the interpersonal relationships between members of a social group. The sociometric survey data is presented in a sociogram. Sociometry helps to determine the status, position, relationships and personal well-being of members of different groups (e.g. work, class, organisation). Sociometric methods: survey, test, observation.
- The Six-Hat Approach – to better understand another person’s point of view, or to see a phenomenon or fact from a different perspective, we need to break away from conventional thinking. This is helped by so-called “thinking caps”. The idea was proposed by Edward de Bono. He identified six ways of thinking and associated them with coloured hats – white, red, black, yellow, green and blue. To see a phenomenon from a different perspective, we have to take off one “hat” and put on another. The “caps” can be used singly or in a sequence. One of them could be: First, we clarify the situation and the course of the discussion (blue hat), then we present facts related to the subject under consideration (white hat), then we generate ideas related to the subject under consideration (green hat), then we evaluate the ideas by identifying possible advantages (yellow hat) and disadvantages and obstacles (black hat), then we express feelings about the different options (red hat), then we summarise and take a decision (blue hat).
- “Broken” circles – a method to determine the microclimate of a team/classroom, to improve cooperation and teamwork skills. For this activity, students are divided into groups of 3-6. Each student is given an envelope containing 2-3 puzzle pieces. The aim of the activity is for the pupils to add their pieces so that each pupil has a complete circle. Class rules: no talking to each other, no body language (blinking eyes, hand gestures, etc.). Each pupil has to make their own circle. No one can show another player how to make his own circle or do it for him. Pupils cannot take parts from another pupil, but they can give one or more of their parts to another pupil. They can’t put a puzzle piece in someone else’s puzzle – they have to pass it on to the other person or put it on their table.
- “What’s on your mind ” – a game for students to improve their ability to communicate and cooperate. During the game, several pupils have to replicate the drawing according to the information given by their classmates (these pupils see a picture of what the drawing should be). Later on, they discuss how the drawer felt, how the message was conveyed, why the drawing was/wasn’t like the picture, how the information was conveyed, etc.
- Nintendo case study – students are introduced to a situation (a lost Nintendo game) and the people involved. Students analyse what went wrong, how the situation could have been handled to avoid this ending, etc. Pupils analyse the situation with a teacher or psychologist, assessing the behaviour of the people involved in the situation, the solutions, etc.
The visit to Italy included a presentation of the Italian education system, the ways in which bullying is reduced in schools and the contribution of the Progetto Crescere cooperative. The Italian partners also presented their social projects and results.
The mobility visit was organised in the framework of the Erasmus+ project “Fight Against Bullying at School”. The project aims to discuss and test tools and methods to effectively tackle bullying in schools and to share the valuable experience of the partner countries on the topic of bullying in schools. A successful project will provide a wide range of methods and tools to effectively combat bullying and improve the skills of project participants in this area.
The direct target group of the project is adults working in an educational institution.
The project runs from 2020. September. until 2023 September. The project is implemented by partners from Lithuania, Italy, France, Belgium and Spain.
Eglė Stremauskienė, Methodologist, Kaunas Education Innovation Centre
