Asegúrate: An Intervention Program against Cyberbullying Based on Teachers' Commitment and on Design of Its Instructional Materials.

Rosario Del Rey,José Casas,Rosario Ortega-Ruiz

doi:10.3390/ijerph16030434

Abstract

This article presents the impact on cyberbullying of the Asegúrate program. This educational program is based on the theory of normative social behavior, self-regulation skills, and the beliefs held by adolescents and consists in a whole package of strategies and resources to help teachers to include in the ordinary curricula. The evaluation of Asegúrate was carried out with a sample of 4779 students (48.9% girls) in 5th and 6th grade in primary education and compulsory secondary education (M = 12.76; SD = 1.67) through a quasi-experimental methodology, with two measures over time. The instrument used was the European Cyberbullying Intervention Project Questionnaire. The results show that the involvement in cyberbullying as cyber-victim, cyber-aggressor, and cyber-bully-victim increase without intervention, whereas it diminishes when intervention is carried out by the teachers who have received specific training and have used the didactic Asegúrate package. Additionally, the impact of the intervention on the different types of behaviors was analyzed, and the results show that Asegúrate is more effective with some forms than with others. Consequently, the Asegúrate program is effective for decreasing the prevalence of cyberbullying, but some modifications need to be made to impact on all the different forms it can take.

Highlights

In recent years, there has been increased awareness among both teachers and school counsellors that interpersonal relationships between pupils, and the classroom atmosphere in general, are complex processes that are heavily influenced by the social microculture of that particular school and the educational and the pedagogical style of the teaching staff [1]
The descriptive results were calculated by examining the frequency of responses in both groups for the different types of behavior measured by the questionnaire, in order to evaluate involvement in cyberbullying in the pre-test
This system of pre/post evaluation has enabled us to note any improvements in prevalence for the different aspects of cyberbullying/cyber-victimization evaluated with the questionnaires, and to rank the results in order of highest to lowest prevalence of the different types of cyberbullying

Summary

Introduction

There has been increased awareness among both teachers and school counsellors that interpersonal relationships between pupils, and the classroom atmosphere in general, are complex processes that are heavily influenced by the social microculture of that particular school and the educational and the pedagogical style of the teaching staff [1]. The increased recognition of this phenomenon has helped to draw more attention to the importance of interpersonal relationships between pupils and how these affect the classroom atmosphere in general [3,4]. The publication and wider circulation of the findings of this research into bullying, and later cyberbullying, has led ordinary school teachers, school counselors, and school staff in general to give more thought to the socio-affective atmosphere in schools, which should be seen as a crucial part of a school’s culture [5]. Public Health 2019, 16, 434; doi:10.3390/ijerph16030434 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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