Bullying and cyberbullying are often discussed as if they were separate from the rest of school life: an unfortunate problem to be dealt with when it appears, preferably quickly, and then set aside.
However, bullying and cyberbullying are part of a wider digital and educational environment shaped by relationships, habits, institutional culture, and require integrated solutions that actively involve all memberso of the educational ecosystem.
The three handbooks for parents, teachers, and school leaders, produced within the EU-funded DRONE project, are a step in the right direction. They were conceived as part of a broader set of training modules and practical resources aimed at strengthening digital literacy, resilience, responsible online behaviour, and the prevention of digital harm across the whole school community. The starting premise is simple: children do not experience the digital world in fragments, therefore the response of adults shouldn’t be fragmented either.
The handbooks share a common structure, but each is written for a different audience and sphere of responsibility.
- Parents are addressed in their everyday role as primary educators of their own children.
- Teachers are addressed as professional educators and daily role models.
- School leaders are addressed as the people who shape policy, systems, and culture.
Taken together, the three volumes amount to a whole-school, whole-community approach to digital safety and wellbeing.
The DRONE materials define bullying as repeated, intentional behaviour that causes harm, distress, or humiliation and involves an imbalance of power. Cyberbullying, although statistically less prevalent, intensifies those harms by making them harder to escape. A cruel comment that once might have remained in the corridor can now travel instantly, remain visible indefinitely, and reach audiences far beyond the school gate. Humiliation can become public, persistent, and difficult to contain.
Yet one of the most important contributions of the DRONE handbooks lies elsewhere: they refuse to reduce bullying to peer aggression alone. Children may also be humiliated, intimidated, or controlled by adults, including teachers and family members. This point is uncomfortable but crucial. Any prevention strategy that looks only for “student misbehaviour” is liable to miss forms of harm that are less visible, more difficult to report, and just as damaging.
The Parents’ Handbook
From this perspective, the parents’ handbook offers the first indispensable layer of prevention: the quality of the relationship at home. Its core message is that parents do not need to become technical experts in order to protect their children well. What they need, above all, is to be present, credible, and approachable. The handbook consistently frames parents as mentors, models, and protectors. That means creating the kind of domestic climate in which a child can speak about online conflict, humiliation, fear, or confusion without assuming that disclosure will immediately lead to blame, panic, or confiscation of digital devices.
This is a prevention strategy in its own right. Children are far more likely to seek help when they trust that the adult listening will stay calm, take them seriously, and respond constructively. Research results from DRONE clearly indicated that children identify parents, not teachers, as the go-to people when they experience problem online. The parents’ handook therefore places strong emphasis on listening first, documenting what has happened, using platform tools such as blocking and reporting where necessary, and reassuring the child that the abuse is not his fault. It also encourages parents to notice warning signs: sudden anxiety around devices, reluctance to attend school, withdrawal, distress after going online, or abrupt changes in mood and behaviour.
Just as importantly, the handbook does not treat families as isolated units. It encourages parents to work with teachers, speak with other families, and understand digital safety as a shared responsibility rather than a private burden. This shifts the focus away from parental guilt or technological panic and towards a more realistic question: how can adults form the alliances that allow children to be protected consistently across contexts?
Access the handbook here: https://library.parenthelp.eu/digital-compass-guide-for-parents/
The Teachers’ Handbook
The teachers’ handbook takes the argument further by locating bullying prevention in the daily life of the classroom. Its premise is that teachers are not merely responders when something goes wrong: they are among the people most capable of preventing harm before it escalates. They can help shape classroom norms, model how authority is exercised, demonstrate that it is possible to disagree without aggression.
The handbook places anti-bullying work squarely within teaching practice. Teachers are encouraged to establish a respectful classroom culture, state clearly that bullying is unacceptable, teach digital etiquette explicitly, and help students understand what respectful conduct looks like online as well as offline. The handbook also highlights the importance of bystanders and the significance of peer defenders: students are not only potential aggressors or victims; they are also witnesses, defenders, and participants in the moral climate of the group. Helping them recognise that responsibility is an integral part of prevention.
The teachers’ handbook is very careful not to idealise the role of adults. It addresses teacher-perpetrated bullying directly: public humiliation, sarcasm, belittling comments, unfair targeting, and the misuse of digital tools to shame students. This approach recognises that schools cannot credibly teach dignity and safety while ignoring abuses of power within their own structures. In this sense, the handbook asks teachers not only to protect students from harm, but also to examine professional culture honestly and act when a colleague’s conduct crosses the line.
Access the handbook here: https://library.parenthelp.eu/digital-navigator-guide-for-teachers/
The School Leaders’ Handbook
The school leaders’ handbook completes the series by moving from relationships and practice to institutional design. Its central argument is that bullying and cyberbullying are leadership matters, not simply behavioural matters. Prevention depends on structures: clear policies, trusted reporting routes, staff training, evidence protocols, communication systems, and safeguarding procedures that people actually understand and use all come into play.
In doing so, the whole-school logic becomes most explicit. The school leaders’ handbook calls for policies that name all forms of bullying clearly, including those involving peers, teachers, and family members. It stresses the need for confidential reporting systems, annual staff training, support for teachers handling sensitive cases, and procedures that prioritise safety, dignity, and privacy. The Handbook also insists that leaders must be prepared to act decisively when allegations involve adults. Its focus on accountability is one of the reasons the handbook rises above generic exhortation and into the practical terrain: institutional credibility is built by having the right values on paper and by responding timely and competetently when those values are tested.
The handbook links crisis response to school culture. Incidents can become a moment of institutional learning: a chance to strengthen expectations, clarify responsibilities, improve communication, and rebuild trust. Prevention is therefore not separate from response, if the response is done intelligently and followed by reflection and reform.
Access the handbook here: https://library.parenthelp.eu/digital-pathfinder-guide-for-school-leaders/
Moving Forward
The three DRONE handbooks offer something more coherent than a set of recommendations: an integrated vision of education as an ecosystem in which Parents create trust and make disclosure possible, teachers shape the daily climate in which respect is either practised in the classroom, and school leaders build the systems that make these efforts consistent, credible, and sustainable at school. None of these roles can replace the others, and none is sufficient on its own.
If bullying and cyberbullying are treated as occasional disruptions, schools will continue to rely on partial solutions. If, instead, they are understood as symptoms of a complex problem that requires integral solutions, the response will require a shift towards integrated approaches to prevention and intervention, not simply more protection, or more prohibitions.
The challenge is building cultures of mutual trust, responsibility, and cooperation between children, parents, and school leaders.
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