Entre cenas e realidade: o cinema como recurso pedagógico no combate à violência escolar e ao bullying

Abstract

Given the persistence of bullying as a recurring practice in schools, despite the existence of public policies aimed at addressing it, this study seeks to understand how education professionals interpret the manifestations of this phenomenon in school and socio-educational settings and the strategies they employ to address it. The general objective is to understand how education professionals working in a Municipal School and in a Center for Children and Adolescents interpret and address bullying in their educational practice, analyzing the potential of cinema as a pedagogical resource for discussing the phenomenon and promoting practices aimed at preventing school violence. Specifically, the study sought to identify manifestations of bullying in the investigated contexts, analyze the difficulties faced by education professionals in preventing and addressing these situations, examine the possibilities of cinema as an educational language, and develop an e-book as an educational product. The study is based on the hypothesis that, although bullying is recognized as a problem in everyday school life, it is still frequently normalized in relationships among students, making its identification and systematic intervention by education professionals more difficult. It is also assumed that cinema, when intentionally used and pedagogically mediated, can foster processes of critical reflection, awareness, and conflict mediation. This qualitative study was conducted in a Municipal School and a Center for Children and Adolescents, both located in the same district of the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Seven education professionals participated in the study: three from the Municipal School—a pedagogical coordinator, an educational technical assistant, and a teacher—and four from the Center for Children and Adolescents—a service manager, a technical assistant, and two socio-educational educators. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, analysis of the school's Political-Pedagogical Project and other institutional documents, and subsequently examined using thematic analysis. The analysis enabled the identification of six categories: the normalization of bullying in relationships among students; power relations and peer violence; silence, help-seeking, and institutional mediation; the influence of the social and family context; institutional challenges in addressing bullying; and cinema as a pedagogical possibility for ethical education and the construction of democratic coexistence. The findings indicate that bullying remains widely normalized in everyday school life and is often interpreted as teasing or peer conflict, making its identification and intervention more difficult. They also reveal that power relations, the influence of family and social contexts, victims' silence, and institutional limitations constitute significant challenges to the development of permanent prevention strategies. At the same time, the findings demonstrate that cinema has the potential to foster awareness, critical reflection, and conflict mediation when intentionally integrated into pedagogical practices. As an educational product, an e-book containing guidelines for the pedagogical use of cinema was developed to support education professionals in preventing and addressing bullying.