A narrative aproach to the prevention of school violence: the tree of live and collective documents

Abstract

The original intention of this work was to prevent bullying among adolescents, making visible the responses that they gave to past conflictual situations. Listening to the stories about the inner reflection we can understand the wider culture and how our closer experiences related with violence have been shaped by it. Starting from the idea that personal values are the platform from which we can construct an intervention for the treatment and prevention of bullying, we believe that reconstructing the teen’s experience about their past difficulties and how they solved it, they will be able to solve more effectively difficult situations in the future. This paper presents the various methods used, tree of life and collective documents, to compile the adolescents personal values, dreams and hopes, on which to base the coping mechanisms to face violence and to rescue their stories of resilience. It is important to highlight that these narrative practices aim at creating a suitable climate in order to avoid re-traumatization and, in turn, helping to rescue the alternative stories to the problem of violence.