La empatía como método de prevención del bullying escolar

Abstract

RESUMEN: Empathy as a method of prevention of school bullying deals with the importance of early reduction of school abuse based on the development of empathy from the first years of schooling. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the development of empathy is a useful preventive method to control this school phenomenon, especially cyberbullying, which in itself is elusive. It is stated that only if the students are fully aware of the damage that they are causing, intervention methods will be effective. The Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index was applied in a group of adolescents from a private school in Quito and as a complement, a survey to teachers about the treatment that the educational institution gives to bullying. The results indicate that students have few tools to be able to respond to situations that warrant an immediate reaction because they have not developed empathy correctly. In addition, the low level of imagination that resulted in one of the scales of the Davis Test shows that empathy is linked only to the inner circle of students, showing that it is not a universal value, key to the successful prevention of bullying. On the other hand, the results indicate that teachers do have solid knowledge on how to intervene in cases of harassment and for this reason they establish that levels of harassment have decreased.