Group counseling as methodology to prevent homophobic bullying in an action-research project

This scientific work is represented by an action-research project that has been thought with the aim to prevent the homophobic bullying. This project arises from the necessity to train and to sensitize on this problem teachers, parents and other education agency that bear on the development of sexuality social representation. One of the techniques that has been used on this type of project is group counselling with subjects that belong to the same age. This technique is a short term intervention realized in a group with subject that don’t present any psychopathological problems. Group counselling is articulated in two cycles of three sessions each; sessions take place weekly and last for one hour and fifteen minutes. The discussions are conducted by two psychologists, one of whom has the role of conductor and the other that has a non-participant observer role. At the end of each session the task of the second psychologist is to write down the principal topics that have been carried by during the group session. The aim of these group sessions are to think about the topic of the gender identity and try to deal with the problem of homophobic bullying. In the poster the whole project, with a particular focus on the main topics that have came to light during group sessions will be discussed.