Cyberbullying in the classroom. Some guidelines for teachers.

This article was first published in Spanish in Contraste Magazine

In recent years, cyberbullying has become one of the most complex problems for teachers in educational centres. Its speed, the absence of limits, and the digital environment in which it occurs have led the educational community to question how and to what extent cyberbullying can be fought in schools.

To be able to, you have to want to...

Usually, to educate children about preventing cyberbullying, we start with 'what is right and wrong,' i.e., we focus on a code of ethics.?

Initially, children's morality develops through obedience to adults' teachings, avoidance of punishment for bad behaviour, and a willingness not to let down those closest to them. Through the work of families and teachers, a set of moral values is gradually achieved.

However, learning a code of ethics does not mean children have made them their own and integrated them into their code of conduct. It is not so immediate. The assimilation of such a code reveals that children?are influenced?by their environment, which is a double-edged sword since not all environments close to the pupils are positive.

In fact, adolescents are often involved and participate in teasing, threats, exclusion, impersonation and other cyberbullying behaviours because they are interacting with a more disruptive environment. Also, the fact that?this can be done?completely anonymously in the digital world makes it even easier because 'who will blame me?

Therefore, in order to prevent cyberbullying, it is necessary to go a step further in the education of students' moral development. We need to work so that students freely want to use screens appropriately by acquiring ethical principles assimilated more deeply. We propose the following recommendations:

- Create activities that allow different roles to be adopted. Everything that has to do with putting oneself in the place of the other helps a person to advance in their moral development. Thus, activities that allow students to learn about the roles of aggressor, victim and bystander can help them decide how they want to influence others.

- Work on moral dilemmas. Sometimes, we find ourselves in situations where a person struggles between conflicting moral positions, none overriding the other. Exposing students to different types of conflicts is one of the most effective strategies to encourage their willingness to make choices and take action toward others.

- Support students in shaping their circle of friends. Boys' and girls' social environments can have a positive or negative influence on their development of ethics. This implies that, despite the work done in the classroom, if the circle of friends normalizes and supports behaviours such as teasing, threats, or extortion, it will be more difficult for students to impose their own moral principles (and, therefore, to avoid participating in cyberbullying situations).

Through mentoring or the guidance department, the school can help them choose their group of friends, learn to recognize their own needs and identify which classmates can cover them.

?... but wanting is not always enough

If we can get students to want to behave appropriately themselves and, in terms of digital well-being, to want to prevent and act against cyberbullying, we can be satisfied. However, we need to work on character and digital resilience for prevention. We propose to work with your students on four personal skills to favour prevention and action against cyberbullying. We look at them below:

1. Emotional intelligence. This is the ability to?recognize?one's emotions and those of others and identify how they influence us. A good development of this competence can favour good treatment of others in the digital environment.
2. Communication. Beyond being aware of our own emotions and those of others, it is essential to remember that what we say and how we say it can generate emotions (more or less pleasant) in other people, thus provoking a potential conflict.?This?is why it is?extremely important?to teach pupils skills for communicating with screens, such as vocabulary, emoticons, connectors, etc.
3. Conflict resolution. It is common for some kind of conflict to arise between students from time to time. It is?important?to provide children with conflict resolution strategies to reduce the risk of the conflict being transferred to the digital environment (through memes, derogatory comments on social networks, etc.),

In short, to prevent cyberbullying in the classroom, it is essential to encourage students' ethical development so that they want to make good use of screens of their own free will and provide them with the tools to handle themselves correctly in the digital environment.

Original article in Spanish: àlex Gili i Gómez de Segura Psychologist KOA Technology project

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