Literature for the prevention of bullying in the early stages of education

Reading as a socio-educational intervention strategy

Education must be committed to the processes of integral personal development, social well-being and quality of life. Today’s society has presented us with new social realities, which are a continuous challenge for education (Caride, 2011). Reading is one of the most widely used practices at school and plays an essential role in school activities from a very early age. Text reading is an effective method for critically confronting reality; it becomes a suitable vehicle for deepening those texts that already pose conflicts and for turning a problematic issue into a topic for discussion and reflection (Nieto-Martín & González-Pérez, 2002). The commentary of a text is a process of integration of diverse information and a valid vehicle of becoming aware of our living environment; but it also allows us to critically examine relevant messages or contents, questioning ourselves about the validity of these contents. Therefore, reading goes beyond the school education sphere, contributing significantly to the social integration and personal development of individuals.

It should be understood that literary texts exist not only to bring aesthetics and beauty to the world, but also to broaden our educational process. The events that take place throughout the story and the characters that come to life through words become vicarious experiences that may have an impact in the way our attitudes and behaviours are geared, besides influencing our own moral judgements (Borgia & Myers, 2010). When readers immerse themselves in texts, they create a mental picture of the story and even empathise with the characters and situations thereof from an emotional point of view (Jauss, 1992; Beach, 1993). The role models represented by the characters of the texts become the main focus of literary communicative interaction thanks to the processes of empathy or identification with the characters and their vicissitudes within the world of fiction. The different association relationships created between readers and characters from complex psychological processes make possible to recognize and imitate the values that are represented.

The socializing power of stories lies in their emotional power, in their ability to present our own fears, feelings and internal conflicts. Reading contributes to rebuild oneself against any loss affecting the meaning of life, it is a common experience that has been described by many authors (Petit, 2008). The metaphorical power of words and their permanent distancing effect provide readers with a renewed, vigilant view of reality, which may make him/her question himself/herself critically and efficiently about the existence of real things.

Intervention strategies through reading use texts to bring readers closer to reality. The aim is to encourage dialogue between readers and texts, reasoning about the events that happen to the characters, relating the behaviours reflected in the texts to their own experiences and beliefs. Texts offer materials suitable for reflection and analysis, allowing readers to exercise decision making and problem solving (Yubero & Larrañaga, 2011, 2014). The experiences conveyed by books allow us to live other lives, to identify with other persons or reject them, to know different scenarios and times, to face multiple conflicts, to explore our relationships against them and to take certain criteria or stands.

Literary works raise different social and cultural conflicts, which allow readers to understand that others before them went through similar moments, provoking situations that can help to know, understand and/or cope with one’s own conflicts. By means of reading, readers learn how to make decisions and solve problems, becoming a privileged instrument to educate in social skills and values.

Within the classroom we find, for example, numerous studies that show the benefits of reading and literature to work on coeducation and the development of egalitarian attitudes (Turín, 1996; López-Valero et al., 2000; Yubero et al., 2009, 2014; Yubero & Larrañaga, 2010); as well as interculturality and education for tolerance through literary texts (Dearden, 1995; García-Bermejo & García-Parejo, 2003; Tejerina 2008).

The different ways of reading a text depend on the readers’ experiences, knowledge, context, current situation and needs. We should understand that literary texts are not construed unidirectionally but following multiple interpretations. Text comprehension will be conditioned by what the reader previously knows and by what he/she has updated of that knowledge during the reading process (Short, 1989); because reading, when it is an active and comprehensive task, mobilises the reader, moves him/her and awakens his/her cognition and emotions. Without calling into question the educational role played by reading, we should keep in mind that is perceptive differentiation by the different readers is the key to the process. This way, each reader shall make his/her own perceptive choice from the contents of the text itself, which shall basically be based on his/her experiences, on what he/she learnt and on all those values and beliefs assimilated throughout his/her socialization process.

For this reason, shared reading sessions in the classroom should be planned as socio-educational interventions, in which, while bringing reading closer to children and young people, we help them become more competent, critical and reflective of the society around them, motivating dialogue between the texts and their personal experiences and thus strengthening their reading competence. Reading is a complex cognitive activity, so there may be a process in which those aspects we want to motivate reflection and dialogue are not perceived by the readers to whom they are addressed, and if not by all, at least by those whose vital and contextual characteristics lead them to have different perceptions. The meaning of a work is perceived in different ways depending on the historical, social and cultural context of each reader, since every literary creation is capable of transmitting new suggestions and evaluations depending on the perspective from which it is read or analysed (Mendoza Fillola, 2003; Sánchez-García & Yubero, 2009). Therefore, in order to implement socio-educational interventions based on reading, it is essential to have a mediator who carries out different strategies aimed at recognising and analysing the situations presented in the texts. The role played by the mediator should not consist on imposing one single, officially validated reading, or on avoiding relativism when construing the text to guide the reader to identify certain values (Sánchez-García & Yubero, 2013).

When using literary works for socio-educational intervention, readers must value or reject the characters and relate the behaviours reflected in the texts to their own experiences and values, in order to really reach an understanding between the text, the reader and the society where they live.

Bullying

Bullying is a serious health and social problem for children (Garaigordobil, 2011). It has been defined as an aggressive and intentional act carried out by a group or individual, repeatedly and over time, against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself (Smith et al., 2008). Bullying is not just hitting, there are different behaviours that do the same harm. Five types of bullying can be distinguished in traditional bullying: direct physical bullying (hitting, pushing); indirect physical bullying (breaking, stealing, hiding things); direct verbal bullying (insults, name-calling); indirect verbal bullying (bad-mouthing, spreading rumours); social bullying (not allowing participation in the group, ignoring) (Smith, 2016).

Research has highlighted the relevance of school-based intervention against bullying in primary education (Coffey, 2013; Waters et al., 2012). Longitudinal studies have reported the presence of continuous victims, i.e., victims who maintain that role over time. Victimisation thus stabilises throughout their schooling in a small percentage of children. For this reason, it is essential to intervene from an early age.

Studies have shown there are differences in the coping strategies that victims may adopt. Research shows strategies that seek social support and succeed in blocking the aggressor’s action are effective, while direct aggressive confrontational responses to the offender do not appear to be effective, nor do those that consist of doing nothing or ignoring the situation (Livingstone et al., 2011). The use of ineffective strategies can lead to continued bullying and further harm to victims (Navarro et al., 2018). The role of families and teachers is very important in detecting bullying and is also key in dealing with strategies for dealing with it. The role of teachers is very important in maintaining and promoting a classroom climate based on coexistence and respect.

On the other hand, from the perspective of group psychology, it is essential to understand the adversary in order to resolve a conflict (Gómez & Vázquez, 2015). Understanding the aggressor’s motivations and beliefs is necessary to be able to intervene more effectively (Larrañaga et al., 2018). Bandura’s (1999) Social Cognitive Theory (1999) identifies moral disengagement as a cognitive process through which people justify their aggressive behaviour or distort the consequences it may have on others.. Studies have identified that students who reported moral disengagement from bullying were more likely to engage in these behaviours (Meter & Bauman, 2016; Williams & Guerra, 2007). In minors, aggression is justified because the victims are considered different. This mechanism diminishes empathy towards victims and has serious consequences on the victim’s self-concept development, who also comes to perceive himself/herself as different and responsible for the bullying. Conversely, if aggressors and observers are able to appreciate the victim’s pain, moral disengagement is reduced.

Following the ecological model, adapted from Bronfenbrenner’s Model (1977), friends are a supportive and protective group, although the peer group can also reinforce bullying.. By conceiving bullying as a group process, the link between the bullies and victims is affected by other relationships with other peers (Salmivalli, 2010). Research has also linked moral disengagement to observers’ response to bullying (Cabrera et al., 2020). Peers may maintain bullying with their silence, in some cases, because they may find the victimisation amusing; or they may eradicate it with supportive behaviour towards the victim (Olthof et al., 2011). Feeling indifference, amusement, well-being and satisfaction from bullying motivates the repetition of aggressive behaviour (Giménez-Gualdo et al., 2015). It is essential to break the aggression/fun binomial. The association of guilt and grief can trigger bullying intervention behaviour and support for the victim (Perren & Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012).

Children find it difficult to adopt the victim’s perspective and to perceive how the victim feels. This lack of awareness among peers leads to the activation of moral disengagement and lack of support for the victim. They need to recognise the harm caused by peer violence and appreciate the importance of supportive behaviour in stopping victimisation. Therefore, for an anti-bullying programme to be effective, it must make all students aware of their role (Salmivalli & Peets, 2010).

Importantly, moral disengagement is a process in which children become used to bullying through repetition of the behaviour and the beliefs that justify it (Bandura, 2002). From a cognitive-structuralist perspective (Piaget, 1987; Köhlberg & Kramer, 1969), moral behaviours depend on motivations in specific situations, on expectations of behaviours and on one's own or vicarious lived experiences. Moral competences include empathy, reasoning about moral dilemmas and understanding the consequences of their actions on other people. If we take it to the field of bullying, we can situate it in the ability to put oneself in the position of the victim, to reason about bullying situations and to understand the consequences of the victim’s behaviour.

Bandura (1986, 2002) proposed an interactionist approach to moral phenomena, pointing to the relevance of modelling, mentoring and exposure to the reactions of others. For this author, morality is an anticipatory regulatory system, where people monitor and judge their behaviour, according to social norms, in search of self-esteem and personal satisfaction. It differentiates between three processes:

It is necessary to intervene in the moral development of minors so that we can modify bullying behaviour before they develop justification schemes for their behaviour.

Reading as a reflection for the prevention of bullying

The narrative of picture books, both textual and visual, allows us to introduce early readers to many realities in order to open up their world and broaden their experience. The fact that narratives reflect society, with its virtues and defects, makes them a very useful tool for giving visibility to certain social issues and also for their prevention, as well as for socio-educational intervention (Yubero et al., 2022). Empathetic reading, based on identification with the narrative, supports minors. to reflect on behaviours and reactions presented by the characters, whether humans or animals; or to awaken modelling or a critical attitude, as well as to get them to learn how to cope with different situations. Shared dialogue will obviously facilitate reflection on socio-cultural intervention (López Valero & Encabo, 2005).

Through an experimental methodology, Bosh (2022) shows that, in order to be able to read the albums completely, the role of the mediators is essential in helping the children to recognise what they have not seen before. Mediators have to implement the cognitive and emotional actions of reading: understanding and interpreting the reading (text and images),infer a view of reality, consider the behaviour and emotions of the characters, analyse the contexts of the narrative, apply the reading to different aspects of life and draw conclusions about the story.

This reflection is useful in relation to bullying. Based on the reading stories of the readers themselves, we advocate the idea that the reading habit can only be developed through empathetic reading, for which metacognitive strategies of personalisation must be strengthened (Yubero et al., 2019), which are also the key to enhancing the social uses of reading (Cerrillo et al., 2014). It is important to bear in mind that if intervention on aggressive behaviour and peer victimisation is addressed from an early age, the outcome will be more effective. Moreover, the prevention of these aggressive behaviours can be worked on through the reading of children’s books.

The aim of this paper is to develop and evaluate an instrument to facilitate content analysis of bullying in picture books.

Method

The proposed analysis model addresses two key issues. On the one hand, text analysis, which proposes the study of the main narrative elements of a text and focuses on the key elements of any narrative text: characters, conflict and denouement.

In children’s and young adult fiction, the fictional world created in the story basically lies on the characters; as a response to the need to catch the reader’s attention and interest on the main characters, so their characterisation and development acquires greater importance, if possible, than in general literature. The objective of this analysis is to study their capacity to evolve in the story in depth, bearing in mind that what is really important in these characters is the search for the personality in which they are engaged, the ways in which they are able to overcome situations, the whys and wherefores of the ways things work, of the self and of the world around them (Gómez del Manzano, 1987).

In this sense, it is proposed to focus the analysis on the relationship that these characters have with the bullying situation, the strategies they use to confront the situation and the reason that leads to this behaviour.

Denouement is a key element of any narrative. The end of the works is a decisive resource as a constructive element of the story, as it gives a meaning to the narrative; but also because of its link to the educational proposal that underlies most children’s and young adult books. The emotional reactions provoked in the reader by the traditional positive denouement make it the educational denouement par excellence, as it helps the reader to deduce rules of conduct from the success or failure of the characters. But children’s storytelling has also experimented with other kinds of thought-provoking endings. The usual positive denouement converges the positive denouement, in which the problem does not disappear, but the characters learn to live with it; the negative denouement, in which the conflict persists; and, finally, the open denouement in which the resolution of the conflict is left up in the air, which allows for various interpretations of the story (Sánchez-García & Yubero, 2013).

In children’s stories, the illustration acquires great importance and prominence, as it converges the text as another part of the story; helping the reader to identify characters and situations during the reading, to mark the rhythm and sequencing of the narration and, in short, to better understand and interpret the story. For this reason, it is important to focus part of the analysis on the graphic narrative and how it complements the information provided by the text. Links between text and image can be grouped into five categories of interactions (Nikolajeva &Scott, 2001, 2000):

It should be borne in mind that all these classifications are not absolute and the limits between one category and another are not always clear, with more than one of the categories described coexisting in the same composition, as pointed out by (Moya & Pinar, 2007). All these elements are collected in a file that facilitates the identification and description of the categories used for the analysis of the selected books (see Annex 1).

Results

The content analysis of the selected books, according to the categories designed, is presented below. Only the categories that appear in the textual and graphic narrative in each of the books are included in each card.

Conclusion

The categories proposed in the data collection instrument were appropriate for the content analysis of picture books. It allowed us to map the analysis of the bullying reflected in the text and graphic narrative, both in terms of the bullying situation narrated and the roles involved. It also allows us to easily obtain information on the variables described in the literary work. The selection of readings and the programming of activities for the intervention will be easier based on this information.

The albums under analysis reflect the forms of bullying that occur among children most frequently. It is important to note that the books reflect verbal bullying and social bullying as harmful forms of peer relationships. These are forms that may go unnoticed by children and to which they play down. However, all narratives neatly reflect the consequences of any bullying behaviour. As we have mentioned, children have difficulties recognising this area. It is therefore important to pay attention to all text and graphic signs in the text in order to establish a dialogue with children. We have found this useful in order to highlight the reason reported by aggressors and observers for their behaviour. It also allowed us to focus on the emotional analysis of the characters, which is a key aspect of the behaviour of aggression and the reactions of the observers. The books under analysis show fun-aggression and bullying to maintain power over others. It is also very important to be able to pay attention to the role of classmates and teachers (in the texts under analysis, it is the teacher who takes centre stage).

We found the relevance of the resolution of bullying in the narratives very interesting. Positive coping strategies stand out perfectly. This aspect can be strengthened in the intervention with children through reading. We believe that as a line of future work we should further specify the variables of analysis in this section. It may also be interesting to include gender stereotyping analysis, as research has highlighted the relevance of gender norms on bullying behaviours (Villora et al, 2019).

We advocate the use of reading as a tool for intervention against bullying among children. Literary works allow for modelling in a safe environment, facilitate exposure to the reasons and emotions linked to aggression and open the window to learning about the consequences of bullying.

re can monitor the harassment, judge the actions of the characters and reflect on their emotions through storytelling and based on their own behaviour. To this end, it is essential to carry out a prior content analysis of the text in order to direct the actions of the mediators. We hope to be able to contribute to facilitating this task by using the analysis resource presented in this paper.