The purpose of the SAFER – SociAl competences and FundamEntal Rights for preventing bullying project is to develop and implement an innovative method for preventing school violence and bullying, aimed at fostering inclusive education and based on the enhancement of the acquisition of social and civic competences and on the knowledge, promotion and ownership of common positive values and fundamental rights, not only at the level of students and schools but also at the level of community.
Indeed, this novel approach starts from the application of the Whole School Approach (WSA) and so it’s focused on primary prevention through the engagement of students, teachers, school staff and parents. But is also engages in secondary prevention by predominantly increase the strategic role of the school community knowledge and participation, passing from a Whole School Approach (WSA) to what we can call a Whole School & Community Approach (WSCA) where community is meant as Educating Community. This approach fits with what evidences and relevant researches now show: bullying is more than an interaction between individuals, it is a socio-ecological phenomenon that occurs because of what happens in peer groups, families, schools, communities and the wider social environment
The proposed methodology, at the level of the competences to be given to the direct beneficiaries, integrates the “learning to be” with the “learning to live together” concepts, by taking into full account the ecosystem in which students live. That’s why the approach is based on the:
- enhancement of the acquisition of social and civic competences
- promotion of common positive and democratic values and intercultural dialogue
- ownership of the fundamental rights
so to prevent and tackle bullying in a holistic way, supporting young people at home, at school, in class and in their community. Indeed, bullying takes many forms, it is found among both children and adolescents: familial, peer-level, school-level, individual and community factors interact and influence whether bullying takes place in schools and communities and whether it grows.
SAFER is a 36-months Erasmus + KA3 project that involves 8 partners from 7 EU Countries. The project moves step from a preparation phase devoted to better understand and compare trends and developments about anti-bullying WSCA framework as well as what school-based practices and programs are most effective, for whom, and under what circumstances. During the preparation phase, also the perceived risk factors and the emotional and autobiographical impacts that bullying has on the students will be explored, thanks to the development and distribution of a biographic-perceptive questionnaire to students. Capitalizing on the findings, partners will then create and implement the Anti-bullying WSCA framework based on the acquisition of social and civic competences, the promotion of common positive and democratic values and intercultural dialogue, the ownership (knowledge and exercise) of the fundamental rights. To do so, partners will develop programmes for teachers, school staff, students and parents as well as members of the Educating Community. The piloting phase to test the programmes will involve 20 schools, approximately 200 teachers and 1000 students and 500-600 members and/or organizations of the communities where the schools are, plus parents. The whole piloting phase will start on September 2022 and last till June 2023, covering the entire school year.
SAFER aims at bring innovation to the sector involved, shifting the perspective from single level/component programmes for bullying prevention to a multi-faced approach, holistic but flexible, involving the entire Educating Community in the process. Alongside, SAFER strengthen the idea to move from a standardized definition of bullying experience to a specific one, detailed on the basis of the meaning that bullying has in the specific class and/or school context. Following this approach, the prevention measures will be developed at the level of child’s ecosystem instead of a general level and will include the promotion of skills and capacities acquisition rather than fix procedural aspects as basis of the anti-bullying programmes application. SAFER aims at enlarge the WSA, where community factors are considered as complementary to the school related ones, considering schools as a multi-dimensional system, fully inter-related with the community where children li
Partners:
Coordinator: Hallgarten-Franchetti Centro Studi Villa Montesca Foundation – Italy
Giunti PSYCHOMETRICS Srl – Italy
The Cyprus Observatory on School Violence – C.O.S.V., Cyprus Pedagogical Institute – Cyprus
Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) – North Macedonia
Roditeli Association – Bulgaria
Universidade do Algarve (UA) – Portugal
European Anti-Bullying Network (EAN) – Belgium
Regional Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education of Crete – Greece