The Impact of Dialogic Teacher Training on Students’ Peer Intervention to Address School Violence

Abstract

Research has identified that bystander intervention by peers decisively contributes to overcoming violence in school contexts. However, there is little research analyzing the type of teacher training that facilitates it. The present study contributes to expanding the knowledge in this field by analyzing a professional development network for teachers based on dialogic training. Using a research methodology with communicative orientation, we conducted 14 interviews with teachers and 5 focus groups involving a total of 26 high school and primary students. Additionally, we observed 15 dialogic teacher training sessions throughout one year. This article is part of an R+D+i research project called ROM21 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, aimed at enhancing the quality of life for Roma people. As such, two schools were selected in which approximately 2.5% and 32% of the student body identified themselves as Roma. Results show that this program, based on dialogic teacher training, enables teachers to foster students’ ability to take a stance against school violence. Results suggest that the dialogic dynamics prevalent in the analyzed teacher training program transfer to student interactions, notably contributing to the mitigation of school violence. The implications of the results are discussed.