Assessing the role of drama on children’s understanding of bullying

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a dramatized scenario as a tool for educating primary schoolchildren (n = 150) on bullying. One of this study’s main aims was to assess whether the scenario was successful at educating children on the critical characteristics of bullying endorsed by the majority of the researchers. Research findings revealed that, after viewing the scenario, the three main criteria communicated by researchers as being fundamental to the construct and definition of bullying—repetition (3.3%), intent (2.6%), and power imbalance (8.6%)—were mentioned very little. After viewing the dramatized scenario, all students were able to provide viable solutions to bullying either in the form of talking or reporting to a teacher, or by intervening as a bystander. Furthermore, after the implementation of the scenario, children’s spontaneous responses fell into two category themes: being different (45%) and need to establish trust with a teacher or adult in school (35%). Given the promising results of this pilot test, suggestions for further adaptation and implementation of the current, first of its kind, Greek-speaking dramatized scenario, are discussed. This paper also calls for further considerations of the ability of younger children to understand bullying in ways that are consistent with the operationalization within the literature.