A UCO study links motivation in Physical Education with active defence against bullying

Students with greater motivation towards Physical Education tend to intervene actively when they witness a situation of school bullying. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by the research group in Sport and Physical Education for Personal and Social Development (GIDEPSO) of the University of Córdoba (UCO) among more than 1,300 Primary and Secondary students aged between 10 and 18. The research, published in the journal Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, relates the response of bystanders to bullying with their interest in sport practice. At the opposite end, students who have suffered situations of bullying show lower levels of motivation for the subject.

To establish this relationship, the researchers asked the students about their experience of bullying cases they had lived through or witnessed, and assessed their motivation towards Physical Education and their levels of personal and social responsibility. The researcher Rafael Clavero Prados explains that the work focuses on the role of bystanders. The authors argue that defending victims requires more than the willingness to intervene: «students must perceive that they are capable of acting and feel a personal responsibility to do so». For this reason they propose also working on the social level, so that students recognise how their behaviour contributes to maintaining an unfair situation or to stopping it.

The researcher Javier Murillo Moraño stresses the importance of «developing pedagogical models that increase social responsibility, which is related to greater active defence». The GIDEPSO group argues that education in responsibility should form part of a broad bullying prevention strategy that also addresses motivation, relationships between classmates and the response of bystanders to these situations. This line of work takes shape in the PrebullPE programme, a practical model that the group has already brought into classrooms and that addresses the identification of bullying, the management of emotions and the promotion of social skills to improve the school climate. According to the group's principal investigator, Juan de Dios Sillero, the conclusions allow new evidence to be provided and complement the intervention programmes they design. The study is signed by Rafael Clavero Prados, Javier Murillo Moraño, Rafael Zapata Lamana and Juan de Dios Benítez Sillero, from the Department of Specific Didactics of the UCO.