AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
coordinator on the basis of his/her voluntary interest, personal
skills and professional competence, usually for the duration of
one year. It is a teacher who supervises, coordinates and directs
the activities within prevention. In current school practice, the
focus of responsibility for prevention implementation is on the
shoulders of prevention coordinators - teachers who also teach
full-time and they are not extra financially rated for performing
this function.
In practice, the director of a primary or secondary school will
determine the prevention coordinator from the rank of teachers
based on their voluntary interest, personality assumptions and
professional competencies. The prevention coordinator, together
with the director, develops a prevention plan, or preventive
activities plan for the relevant school year, based on strategic
documents of the Slovak Republic or the EU.
The prevention coordinator should coordinate preventive
activities at school, not to be the only preventer at the school.
The coordinator should also cooperate with preventive, advisory
and other professional institutions. The prevention coordinator
has the following tasks:
To work out the plan of preventive activities for the
respective school year.
To perform the role of school counsellor on the issues of
prevention.
To pay special attention to pupils from a disadvantaged
social environment (at risk from social pathology) who are
at increased risk of developing socio-negative phenomena.
To provide coordination of prevention as an integral part of
the education and training process. Within the school's
activities the coordinator should provide preventive and
educational consultations to pupils and their legal
representatives.
To provide a connection between a school and preventive,
counselling and other professional institutions and NGOs
involved in prevention.
To coordinate and methodically guide the preventive and
information activities of pedagogical staff at school
alongside the long-term systematic monitoring and
evaluation of the development of pupils at risk of drug
addiction and other social pathology.
To inform pupils, their parents (or legal representatives)
about the activities of preventive counselling and other
professional institutions about the possibilities of
prevention.
At schools, prevention is implemented through various forms of
preventive action. Preventive projects or programs are the most
suitable form. The most common one-shot activities at schools
are discussions with experts, lectures and classroom prevention.
It is appropriate to include the prevention of socio-pathological
phenomena in individual subjects (e.g. Ethics, Civics, as well as
other subjects that allow it within their curriculum).
3 Content Analysis of School Plans of Preventive Activities
The current state of prevention implementation in the conditions
of elementary and high schools can be evaluated on the basis of
content analysis of the plans of preventive activities at
elementary and high schools, or work plans of a prevention
coordinator. We analysed 70 plans of preventive activities from
the school year 2018/2019 in the Slovak republic (35 plans from
elementary schools and 35 plans from high schools).
A plan of preventive activities must be worked out in detail and
must be specific. It is important for the author of the plan to be
aware of the real risks that endanger the pupils. It is inevitable to
monitor the problem behaviour. Each school must have a plan of
preventive activities worked out for the respective school year.
Some schools develop a plan of activities (or a work plan) of a
prevention coordinator.
Positively can be evaluated those plans, which have activities
aimed at identifying the occurrence of risk and problem
behaviour at school planned at the beginning of a school year.
The majority of plans (52 plans) contained the issue of
extremism, racism and xenophobia prevention, fully in
accordance with the valid Pedagogical-organisational
instructions for the school year 2018/2019. However, the
activities were not specified.
The issue of virtual environment risks was covered by 27 plans,
in another 2 cyberbullying was mention in connection with
bullying. So the prevention of cyberspace risks was included in
the plans of 29 schools, which represent 41% of the evaluated
schools.
The results showed that insufficient attention is paid to certain
issues in the process of planning the preventive activities. Of the
plans that paid special attention to cyberspace risks, only 3
explicitly mentioned sexting. None of the evaluated plans
contained the prevention of risk sexual behaviour. Similarly,
none of them mentioned eating disorders.
When evaluating the plans from elementary schools, a serious
deficiency was identified – preventive activities were only rarely
aimed at primary level pupils. The preventive plans contained
activities for the 5
th
-9
th
grade pupils only.
A plan of preventive activities, or work plan of prevention
coordinators, can be considered a strategic school document in
the area of prevention. We can assume that if it contains planned
preventive activities, they will be really implemented. Naturally,
even precisely worked-out plan may not be implemented. Or, on
the other hand, such situation may occur that even if a certain
phenomenon is not included in the prevention plan, it is covered
by activities from counselling facilities workers and performed
on a professional level.
4 Conclusion
Pay adequate attention to plans of preventive activities, so that
they are conclusive and specific. We found out, that the surveyed
school preventive plans take only minimal account of the real
occurrence of problem or risk behaviour of pupils.
At schools, it is necessary to pay attention to prevention, it is
suitable to implement programs focused on harmonization of
relationships and improvement of school climate. To implement
effective forms of prevention (e.g. solving the problematic
situations, trainings, experience and interactive forms). To make
prevention of risk, or problem behaviour an integral part of the
educational process. Incorporate into school educational
programs the compulsory topics connected with multicultural
education, education in the terms of humanism, human rights
education, prevention of all forms of discrimination, xenophobia,
antisemitism, intolerance and racism and in the area of
migration. To continually monitor the behaviour of pupils and
the changes in the cases their healthy personal development
endangerment to ensure their protection and to deal with the
problem in cooperation with the school management and legal
representatives of the child.
When planning the preventive activities, it is important to take
account of the risks that result from modern technologies. At
schools, it is important to inform pupils in an appropriate way
about the risks connected with modern technologies and to
organize interesting preventive activities on the topic, e.g. on the
Safe Internet Day, to teach pupils to protect their identity (e.g.
when creating their profile, publishing their photographs and
personal information) and to emphasize the danger of personal
meetings with contacts from internet, to keep the rule not to go
on with communication with sexual context. Not to forget the
prevention of victimization.
School headmasters should appoint such teachers for
coordinators who passed a specialized education in the area of
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