Over the past twenty years, most Norwegian schools have implemented a variety of whole school approach bullying prevention programmes (e.g. Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme (Olweus & Limber, 2010), Respekt (Ertesvåg & Vaaland, 2007). These programmes encompass activities at the school, classroom, and individual levels. One of the activities at the classroom level is a class meeting where the general concepts related to school bullying as well as cyberbullying could be discussed, and coping strategies could be developed by applying various tools (e.g., process drama). According to Cowie and Sharp (1994) drama enables students to move more quickly in comparison with a classroom discussion to a position where they can challenge the view that school bullying is simply an immovable fact of life. By trying out different roles the students learn more about themself and others, and through exploring different situations they see that they can inspire changes. Therefore, in order to become a part of process drama, students should develop the ability to enter the fiction and explore it. Moreover, drama can effect behavioural change by providing learners opportunities to experience reality from different perspectives (O'Toole et al., 2015). Although drama and school bullying prevention have been researched in various countries (e.g. Burton & O’Toole, 2015; Goodwin et al 2019; Joronen et al 2011; O'Toole et al., 2015), the potential of using drama to combat bullying has been neglected in Norwegian classroom research.

Teachers play a very important role in process drama, particularly in planning, and leading the students in to fictional work, because they frame students in roles, lead process drama, and take the participants through different levels. It is necessary for a teacher to give participants new feeds to solve and lead the processes in a safe and clear way, being able to invite the participants to take part in the fiction, receive input along the way, and improvise and play on the ideas that arise (Heggstad, 2012). The current multiple case study attempted to integrate different fields of expertise of the investigators, viz. psychology and drama. Through collaborative efforts, the researchers aimed to explore the contribution of process drama to the students understanding of the phenomenon of school bullying/ cyberbullying and the development of coping strategies.

The current research project Drama & Cyberbullying (2017-20) is predicated on a well-known, traditional process drama called “The Event”, created by the Norwegian drama pioneers, Eriksson and Mjaaland Heggstad in 2002. Methodologically, this process drama is influenced by Heathcote (1990), Bolton (1998) and Boal (1992). The students involved in the multiple case study incorporated cyberbullying in drama conventions at a very early stage of the class meeting, therefore, the cyberbullying became the main issue.

Student voices have been a condition of importance in the current research project. We aimed to investigate student voices about school bullying as a phenomenon and its prevention possibilities by applying drama conventions in a class meeting. Specifically, we sought to find out (1) how process drama enabled students to express their ideas of school bullying/ cyberbullying and coping strategies to deal with it; and (2) how the students evaluated process drama in the multiple case study.  

The aims of process drama are “to step into another’s shoes” in order to observe, to feel, and to explore dilemmas from various angles. Moreover, in the current research project, process drama consisted of a broad range of drama conventions: framing as teachers in a “Staff meeting”, inviting to explore different thoughts in “Voices in the Head”, experiencing the “Hot Seat”, dynamising in “Image Theatre”, participating in “Writing in Role”, “Meeting with a Role Figure”, and “Assessment choices”. 

Participants Altogether, ninety-five students, who were fifteen or sixteen years of age and from four different classes in one secondary school, participated in this multiple case study. In terms of gender, forty-five boys and fifty girls participated in this project. The consent of the participants and the permission from the school were obtained in accordance with the requirements of the Norwegian Data Protection Services. The principle of informed consent was not violated and the students had the right to refuse to be observed. The investigators had double roles as both teachers and researchers. One of them was responsible for non-participatory observation and taking fieldnotes; the second one led the process drama and performed different roles: the school principal and Steven’s mother/father. Data collection techniques and data analysis In the current study, the following data collection techniques were included in this multiple case study: a) fieldwork in exploring the theme of bullying through process drama, b) observation and c) survey. The main tool in the research was the implementation and observation of the process drama. Conducting observation of students in a natural educational setting enabled us to collect data on the human setting, interactional setting, and, finally, the programme setting. The third tool for the data collection was a short questionnaire consisting of five open-ended questions: 1. What was your experience of this workshop? 2. What did you experience as the advantages and disadvantages of using drama methods on bullying issues? 3. What changes would you suggest for the drama workshop? 4. How would you describe the importance of preventing school bullying? 5. How can we avoid bullying among our peers? Fieldnotes from observation, data from survey, data from the writing in role and audio records were fed into the qualitative data analysis software (Nvivo-12) and distinguished the main categories of the students’ feedback on the process drama. The study is based on a hermeneutic phenomenology (Gadamer 1989) where the interpretation of participant experiences is at the heart of the data. In the other words, the researcher and participant work together to bring life to the experience being explored, through the use of imagination, the hermeneutic circle and attention to language and writing. The hermeneutic circle of understating (Gadamer 1989) reveals that the whole must be understood from the part and the part from the whole, and this was followed in the interpretation of the bullying phenomenon.

The majority of the students who participated in the process drama against bullying gave positive feedback and were very satisfied. The most frequent feedback from the survey was that “it was fun” to participate in the process drama. The intensity within the “fun” category varied from being good, exciting, or great fun (e.g. “It was fun to experience different roles and at the same time get a better insight into cyberbullying”). The second most frequently occurring category of feedback was “educative” (e.g. “Very educational. I have got many useful ideas that I can take forward with me in my life”). Most of the participants who described the process drama as interesting concluded that it was interesting to learn more about (cyber)bullying through the dramatisation “because we did not have an activity like this before”. The feedback from the students revealed that such a form of class meeting could give a deeper insight into the specificity of school bullying/cyberbullying and its prevention. Moreover, the class meeting with process drama elements can develop a better understanding of the school bullying/cyberbullying phenomenon and increase students’ empathy to a bullied/cyberbullied student. At the same time, it is a more fun way of learning about really sensitive and difficult issues. The knowledge and competence gained during that class meeting can be transferred from fiction into real life. By taking on fictional roles in invented scenarios, based on real experiences but fictionalised to make them safe, the participants were able to see themselves as others.

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