This research intended to develop Gestalt therapy-based group counseling program for preventing bullying of lower graders of elementary school and verify its effectiveness. It considered bullying which is a social problem as the retroaction of the who...
This research intended to develop Gestalt therapy-based group counseling program for preventing bullying of lower graders of elementary school and verify its effectiveness. It considered bullying which is a social problem as the retroaction of the whole class and developed Gestalt therapy-based group counseling program which is structuralized by focusing on the importance of peer relations and change of classroom environment so as to change students' onlooking behavior to defensive behavior and be directly helpful in teased situation with their interests in bullying. The name of program is < GRIP friend program > organized by total 8 programs(twice a week) and 11 group tasks(on days without program three times a week) for 4 weeks. The subject of research is the third graders of S Elementary School located in Seoul, two classes who obtained agreement of school previously and total 41 students. For the verification of effectiveness, bullying defensive behavior, onlooking behavior, peer relations and class environment were measured for experimental group and control group before and after the program and mixed-design ANOVA was conducted. The results of this research can be abstracted as follows. The first, onlooking behavior and defensive behavior of participants in experimental group after the program didn't show significant changes. The second, GRIP friend program always makes a positive effect on the improvement of peer relations. More concretely, this program contributed to the mutual confidence among the peers and improvement of communication quality. The third, this program partially made an effect on the improvement of class environment. The program made a significant effect on the improvement of class participation, but didn't show any change for the improvement of class familiarity. By synthesizing those results of research, it discussed implications, this research's significance, limitations and suggestion of following researches.