Literary texts for the prevention of harassment

Abstract

The XXI century has created new educational spaces that require an increase of the educational and social opportunities that facilitate social inclusion processes. Among the new realities of our social contexts we found actions against peer violence behaviors. Schools and social institutions should work together to fill the needs of the children involved in peer aggression. It is crucial to provide educational programs and resources to enhance the quality of life for these children. Reading practices may be an important part of the social intervention in this kind of problem. Reading contributes to promote values of coexistence and also allow to work over the exclusion and maladjustment problems. Images in the twenty-first century children’ albums make reading more interesting and allow to intervene in different issues. Album readers can understand the everyday life of those who suffer violence, connect those situations with their own lives, empathize with the characters and adopt their own opinion about these topics. Our goal is to introduce children and teenagers into the analysis of peer relationships and conflicts in schools through the reading practices. The intervention program that we present here is directed to work with parents as a social mediation agents, adopting a cooperative learning approach.