Bullying e sua prevenção: concepções e práticas de psicólogos escolares

Abstract

School violence has acquired great visibility in society and bullying, in particular, has taken alarming proportions with highlights including the media. The term bullying is of Anglo-Saxon origin and comes from the expression "to bully", meaning harm, intimidate, abuse. Although the concept of bullying is no consensus in the literature, we can understand it as an aggressive, persistent and repeated behavior with intent to cause physical or mental harm to one or more students who are weaker and unable to defend themselves. That is maintained despite the issuance of clear signs of opposition and disapproval from the target. Among the figures involved in bullying are the aggressors, victims, victims/aggressors and the observers, who are not directly involved but live in an environment where the problem occurs. Another highlight is the role of the school, their managers and school psychologists as fundamental to implement programs to identify, intervene and prevent bullying efficiently. The present study aimed to investigate the concepts and practices for school psychologists who work in the city of Juiz de Fora and who turn to prevent and intervene in bullying situations in the school context. After the project was approved by the Ethics Committee, the acting school psychologists survey was conducted in public and private schools in the city, with a further invitation to these professionals for research participation. 12 school psychologists were interviewed using a questionnaire identification and a semi-structured script. The first contained information on gender, age, relationship with the institution, work experience in the educational institution, etc., and the second encompassed 13 questions distributed from 3 themes, namely: Conceptions about bullying , practices and prevention. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed for thematic and structural content (Bardin, 2011). The results showed that most school psychologists sought additional training through postgraduate courses, although to report lack of training in relation to bullying in their work context. Professionals possess knowledge and limited and inconsistent practices within the bullying, with a reactive despite prevention focus. Thus, no broad preventive projects, involving the whole school, which goes against the national and international literature on the topic were identified. The family was highlighted as the main root causes of bullying and how the primary responsibility for prevention, pointing to a difficulty of identifying the school psychologists and relational factors involved in the phenomenon, taking responsibility for intervention and prevention. Identifies the need for the school psychologist is prepared to intervene and prevent bullying in the school context, with a proactive approach to promote psychological health and skills for human development .