Crenças dos gestores escolares a respeito da justiça restaurativa como facilitadora na gestão do bullying

Abstract

Bullying is considered a type of violence specific to the educational context, characterized by intentional and repetitive actions, carried out by one or more individuals against another(s), in situations where there is an imbalance of power. In view of the various problems that it can cause to those involved and their surroundings, the management of bullying becomes important. In view of this, Restorative Justice (JR) presents itself as a methodology that aims to involve all parties to a conflict, with the purpose of identifying problems and facilitating their resolutions, seeking to establish an environment of peace and security. To verify the feasibility of implementing this methodology in schools, the study of the beliefs of school administrators is important. Therefore, as an objective, we sought to study the beliefs of school administrators about the viability of Restorative Justice as a possible tool for resolving conflicts arising from bullying. Individual, remote and face-to-face, semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 school managers from all nine regions of Belo Horizonte (Northwest, Northeast, West, Pampulha, Barreiro, East, North, Venda Nova and Center South). As a result, the 28 managers had already heard about restorative justice through the Municipality of Belo Horizonte (PBH) and/or the Municipal Secretary of Education (SMED-BH), and believe that it is an intervention without judicialization. and a way of deconstructing punitivism. Most believe that bullying generates many consequences for those involved and their surroundings and that RJ is a way of resolving conflicts through dialogue, restoring relationships, searching for solutions in a collective way, which can be viable to help both in bullying conflicts as well as in other conflicts that occur in the school environment. Despite the recognition of bullying as a problem, no school has projects exclusively aimed at resolving bullying and managers see some difficulties in implementing the JR, namely: very crowded schools, lack of physical space, lack of time, lack of interest professionals, lack of support from families and traditional views that create barriers to change. Only one interviewed manager does not believe in JR and says that this is a way of forcing apologies and creating embarrassment. In general, the results found corroborate the hypothesis that managers believe in the viability of JR as an instrument for resolving conflicts arising from bullying, but that, at the same time, managers' beliefs differ from their practical experiences. Greater focus and investment in this matter by the educational sectors is suggested, so that assertive intervention strategies are, in fact, implemented in schools.