Investigating the effectiveness of school-based positivity training on cognitive flexibility and bullying characteristics of bully students

This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of school-based positivity training on bullying dimensions and cognitive flexibility of bully students.

The research method of this research is semi-experimental with pre-test and post-test. Amai community includes all sixth grade students of Tabriz city. To select the research sample, a multi-stage cluster sampling method was used for screening in such a way that first, district one was selected from among the five educational districts of Tabriz city, and six schools were selected from district one, and the sixth grade students of these schools were selected. They were screened using the bullying questionnaire. 40 students who were identified as bullies based on screening were randomly assigned to two control (20 people) and experimental (20 people) groups. The students of both groups completed cognitive flexibility questionnaires of Dennis and Vanderwaal (2010) and Qoldari Pachin and Hinduja (2011) as pre-test and post-test.

The results of multivariate covariance analysis showed that school-based positive education has a significant effect on bullying dimensions and that 11.5% of the variance of cyber verbal bullying and 11.8% of traditional bullying is caused by experimental conditions (P<0.05). .Also, the results of univariate covariance analysis showed that positive school-oriented education has a significant effect on cognitive flexibility and 11.2% of the variance of Shakhti's flexibility variable is due to experimental conditions (P<0.05).

It can be concluded that school-based positive education can reduce children's academic and behavioral problems and increase positive academic and cognitive characteristics.