Successful Bullying Prevention: a Curriculum Based on Cooperative Learning – Theoretical Analysis

Abstract

At the level of pre-university education units in Romania, there is a visible concern for identifying the most effective strategies to prevent bullying in parallel with the development of social skills for positive interaction. In accordance with these trends, this work aims to identify some educational strategies to prevent bullying that value the dynamics of cooperation. Thus, in the present study we propose to present the theory of social interdependence from the perspective of cooperative learning in the prevention of bullying. In the scientific literature it is shown that students who have more experiences of cooperation have an increased probability of not developing individualistic tendencies or engaging in intentional acts of aggression. On the other hand, social dominance theories show that through competition students compete for a place in dominance hierarchies and may have harmful intentions. The findings of various researchers show that cooperation is an effective strategy against bullying both in secondary school and in primary school. Cooperative learning significantly reduces bullying because bullies and victims share a tendency to be uncooperative. It was also observed that the results of cooperative learning on prosocial ability they have related by the improvement of the relationship between students. Given that bullies prefer to dominate rather than be cooperative, while victims lack social interaction skills, we believe that the success of bullying prevention is found in a curriculum centered on cooperative learning. Therefore, the design of such a curriculum is important from the perspective of developing students' cooperation and interrelationship skills as a strategy to prevent bullying.