Preschool Work against Bullying and Degrading Treatment: Experiences from an Action Learning Project

The overall purpose is to examine how preschools work to prevent and eliminate bullying and degrading treatment among 3-5-year-old children. The research questions are: What are perceived as challenges in work against bullying and degrading treatment? What actions and activities to improve the work were planned by the preschools?

The results show that most of the challenges in work against bullying and degrading treatment related to prevention, while focus on elimination work was rarer. The authors find that the participants see a correlation between work against bullying and degrading treatment and more extensive values education, which also involved ideas to increase children's participation and influence. The authors identify a total of five areas of challenges which represent the nine participating institutions in general: (1) Collaboration with parents, (2) Improvement of systematic quality development work, (3) Degrading treatment by preschool teachers, (4) Handling conflict situations, and (5) A safe and inspiring environment for all children.

Moreover, the authors find that the institutions' planned actions and activities overall aimed at preventing bullying and degrading treatment by establishing tolerant and trustful relationships at the institution. The study shows, among other things, that the staff are aware of conflict situations among children, and that staff try to find out more about what they themselves actually do in children's conflict situations. For example, the planned actions focus on preventing children's conflict situations by challenging the staff's own norms and values.
Working against bullying and degrading treatment is described as a natural part of everyday activities at the institutions. For example, the staff organise dialogues on how their own norms and values are manifested in practice, and how these can risk contributing to the exclusion of certain children. An assumed result of these dialogues is that staff will become better equipped to deal with conflict situations.

The authors conclude that, by identifying the challenges and actions anchored in local contexts, the participating institutions are on the right track in their work against bullying and degrading treatment. However, the authors notice that the children and their experiences are not always taken into account. Where almost all identified challenges and actions focus on the staff, parents, the environment and/or pedagogical theory and practice, the children remain basically invisible. Thus the authors only find a few examples in the documentation of the children being involved in the institution's work against bullying and degrading treatment. This leads the authors to conclude that the participating institutions overlook a very important point in their work against bullying and degrading treatment among children.

The data material consists of written documentation from work with an action research project aiming at improving the participants' values education in their local preschool, especially regarding work against bullying and degrading treatment. A total of nine head teachers and 20 preschool teachers from nine preschools took part in the project. Over the course of one year they documented their work against bullying and degrading treatment. This resulted in a 10-page document from each of the nine participating preschools, and these constitute the data material in this study. The data analysis was inspired by thematic content analysis for which William A. Corsaro's theory on peer culture and theories on action learning were used.

Söderström, Å., & Hultman, A. L. (2017). Preschool Work against Bullying and Degrading Treatment: Experiences from an Action Learning Project. Early Years, 37(3), 300-312.