European Teachers Become KiVa School Educators
39 teachers from all over Europe participated in the KiVa School programme training course at the University of Turku.
During the course, the teachers got to share their experiences and solve challenges related to bullying.
After finishing the training, the teachers can now for the first time start educating the KiVa programme in their home countries. KiVa School aims at reducing bullying in primary and secondary schools.
The teachers who participated in the course come from Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy and Estonia.
By far the biggest number of visitors, 24 teachers, came from the Netherlands. There the use of the KiVa programme has advanced further than in other European countries.
KiVa abbreviation comes from the Finnish words "kiusaamisen vastainen", against bullying, and the programme aims at reducing bullying by organising training for teachers and offering teaching materials for handling bullying situations.
The programme started in 2006 and was developed cooperatively by the Department of Psychology and the Centre of Learning Research at the University of Turku. Nowadays, it is used in over 90 percent of Finnish schools. In addition, KiVa School has been launched in many schools around Europe.
–The effectiveness of KiVa School has been researched in many countries. We will spread the programme widely from now on in cooperation with our international partners. This week, we train educators, who will in turn support the users of the programme in different countries, says Professor Christina Salmivalli, the director of the programme.
License agreements on using the programme have been made with Belgium and Luxembourg. The goal is to make even more agreements during this year.
The Programme Is Effective
The KiVa School programme is based on research information and has been very well received in schools. The results of the programme have been excellent.
In all the schools that are part of the KiVa programme bullying has reduced significantly each year.
The effectiveness of KiVa school has also been noted abroad.
–I don’t just believe, I really know that the KiVa programme works. Children love the games that are part of the programme, says School Psychologist Herie de Vries from Schola Europaea in Luxembourg.
de Vries says that KiVa School works better than the other programmes they have tried.
Problems Are Solved by Discussing Them with Students
Professor René Veenstra from the University of Groningen says that, in the Netherlands, the need for reducing bullying in schools has been great. Approximately one in four of Dutch children have been bullied at some point.
–The great thing about KiVa is that the bullying is discussed with the whole group, not just with the bully and the victim. Each member of the school community can somehow participate in preventing bullying, says Veenstra.
According to Veenstra, boys are more often the bullies. Miia Sainio, a special researcher on the KiVa programme, agrees.
–Girls bully only each other, but boys bully both girls and boys.
According to Sainio, the most common form of bullying continues to be verbal insults at school. The much discussed Internet bullying is statistically not yet as common as other forms of bullying.
–The most difficult cases of bullying usually take place in secondary schools, where bullying focuses on a single student instead of many.
The director of KiVa School programme, Professor Christina Salmivalli, presented the diplomas that the participants will receive at the end of the course.
>> KiVa School
Text: Matilda Herjanto
Photos: KiVa School, Matilda Herjanto
Translation: Mari Ratia