Research by the Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oulu and the research and experience of project partner institutions have underlined the need for a more holistic approach, nuanced tools, and education in order to tackle and prevent violence in and around schools.

The ALLIES project focuses closely on issues of non-violence, security and equity in school, attending to the perspectives of parents and student welfare team. ALLIES discusses caring specifically as pedagogical possibility and aims to introduce an approach including:

• A holistic, multimodal, community-based programme concentrating on the early recognition of violence.
• Interventive activities that respond to the violence hidden behind the normalised activities of everyday life; for instance, to violence masqueraded in humour, in social play, in messing around, in exclusion, and in normalised, often sexualised name-calling.
• Gender-sensitive interventions: a need exists for interventions that conceptualise gender violence not only as violence against girls and women, but also as violence concerning boys, specifically addressing how some boys are diminished, excluded, or visibly violated due to their non-hegemonic or counter-hegemonic constructions of their masculinities.
• Attending to the needs of disabled and transcultural children.
• Finally, increasing awareness of these issues among adults in and around school who are involved in the lives of schoolchildren.

During the project, an international team of experts will contribute to the construction of non-violent preventive measures to be piloted in preschool classes in Oulu, Parma, and Reykjavik. Pedagogical approaches such as those of Hjalli and Reggio Emilia will be applied as part of the pedagogy.

Educational materials will be developed and integrated into the “From Violence to Caring Study Programme”, an international, multisectoral, web-based specialisation programme for violence prevention (25ects) designed during previous DAPHNE programmes.

Results

The principal result to be achieved during the ALLIES project is to design the pedagogical approach based on caring, justice and non-violence in collaboration with the international expert team. Three screening tools for recognising school violence and outlining student welfare will be developed for teachers, parents, and school health-care personnel.

Additional results to be achieved include:

• An increase in the awareness and professional expertise of teachers, student welfare teams, and parents regarding the prevention of school violence.
• Production of educational material that will affect teacher education curricula.
• A professional, sustainable, multisectoral, multidisciplinary, multicultural network with strong connections to various educational and public organisations on local, national, and European levels.
• An increase in collaboration with local authorities, educational institutes, and other public bodies.
  

Introduction
Project
Partners
Coordinator
Materials

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Updated 23.6.2010