Preventing Intimate Partner Violence: Consent and Respect in Adolescence

Description

Adolescence is a crucial period for learning how relationships work.

It is when young people begin to shape their ideas about love, trust, intimacy, gender roles, consent, boundaries, and conflict.

These ideas are influenced by family, peers, school, social media, films, music, pornography, and online communication, and can affect the way adolescents recognize — or fail to recognize — healthy, unhealthy, and abusive behaviors.

The issue is also urgent. Recent global estimates published by the World Health Organization report that nearly one in three women — around 840 million globally — have experienced partner or sexual violence during their lifetime, and that 12.5 million adolescent girls aged 15–19 experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in the previous year.

This course helps teachers, school counsellors, psychologists, social educators, youth workers and other educational professionals address intimate partner violence prevention from an educational perspective.

The focus is not on labelling students as victims or perpetrators, but on helping adolescents build awareness, language and skills they need to understand relationships based on equality, consent, respect, freedom and mutual care.

Participants will explore how to discuss topics such as myths about romantic love, jealousy, emotional dependence, sexual pressure, digital control, peer influence, gender stereotypes, media representations, bystander responsibility and help-seeking.

They will work with case studies, role play, audiovisual materials, media analysis, group discussion and collaborative projects to help students distinguish between healthy, unhealthy and abusive behaviours, including emotional, psychological, sexual and digital forms of violence.

The course also focuses on how to create safe spaces for dialogue and how to introduce sensitive topics in an age-appropriate, participatory, and non-stigmatizing way.

Participants will learn how to design classroom activities, awareness campaigns, peer-education actions, and student-led projects, while also considering the role of families, school policies, and the wider educational community.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to facilitate classroom dialogue, design prevention and awareness-raising activities, critically analyze media messages about relationships, and develop a school-based prevention plan adapted to their own educational context.

Concept by Raquel Marquino Fernández

Learning outcomes

The course will help participants to:

• Recognize the main forms, warning signs and consequences of intimate partner violence in adolescence, including emotional, psychological, sexual and digital abuse;
• Help students distinguish between healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationship behaviors;
• Analyze how gender stereotypes, myths about romantic love, peer pressure, social media and pornography influence young people’s ideas about love, consent, power and control;
• Promote equality, consent, personal boundaries, respectful communication and healthy relationships in school contexts;
• Facilitate age-appropriate and non-stigmatizing discussions on jealousy, emotional dependence, digital control, rejection, conflict and help-seeking;
• Design awareness-raising activities using case studies, role play, audiovisual materials, media analysis and collaborative projects;
• Develop students’ critical thinking about representations of love, gender, power and relationships in media and digital environments;
• Encourage peer responsibility and bystander intervention when harmful or controlling behaviors are observed;
• Plan inclusive prevention strategies and whole-school initiatives involving students, teachers, families and the wider school community;
• Create a school-based action plan to promote safe, equal, respectful, and violence-free relationships.

Tentative schedule

Day 1 – Introduction to the course

• Introduction to the course and the Academy;
• Introduction to the host city and the week’s cultural activities;
• Icebreaker activities;
• Presentations of the participants’ schools and institutions.

Why schools should address adolescent relationships

• Current data on gender-based violence and intimate partner violence in adolescence;
• Why should schools address adolescent relationships?;
• The role of schools in prevention, awareness-raising and early intervention;
• Group reflection: challenges, concerns, and needs in participants’ own contexts.

Day 2 – Understanding adolescent relationships and intimate partner violence

• Introduction to prevention and awareness-raising in educational settings;
• Adolescence as a key stage for identity and relationship development;
• Healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationships;
• Different forms of violence: physical, psychological, sexual, and digital;
• Early warning signs in adolescent relationships;
• Risk and protective factors;
• Practical activity: analyzing relationship scenarios;
• Group activity: healthy, unhealthy, or abusive?

Day 3 – Gender socialization during adolescence

• Gender stereotypes and unequal expectations in relationships;
• Myths about romantic love;
• Jealousy, possessiveness, emotional dependence, and control;
• The influence of peer groups, music, films, television series, and social media;
• Analyzing representations of love, masculinity, and femininity in popular culture;
• Debate activity: when is a behavior presented as romantic but is actually controlling?;
• External activity: identifying gender messages and relationship models in the city, advertising, and public spaces.

Day 4 – Digital relationships, consent and respectful communication

• Digital communication in adolescent relationships;
• Digital control, cyberstalking, and online harassment;
• Privacy, passwords, location sharing, and image-based abuse;
• Consent, personal boundaries, and sexual pressure;
• Assertive communication and respectful conflict resolution;
• Peer influence and bystander responsibility;
• Analysis of fictional messages, chats, and social media interactions;
• Collaborative challenge: creating an awareness campaign for adolescents.

Day 5 – Designing school-based prevention and awareness projects

• Creating safe and inclusive spaces for classroom discussion;
• Addressing sensitive topics without blaming or stigmatizing students;
• Selecting age-appropriate films, short videos, case studies, and educational resources;
• Integrating healthy relationships and gender equality into different school subjects;
• Designing participatory awareness-raising activities;
• Involving students, teachers, families and the wider educational community;
• Assessing changes in awareness, attitudes and critical thinking;
• Presentation of participants’ school-based prevention projects;
• Peer feedback and adaptation of activities to different educational contexts;
• Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussions;
• Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance.

Day 6 – Structured cultural activities

• Structured cultural activity(ies) according to the hosting location;
• Learning journal: individual written reflection on the course experience;
• Course reflection: self-reflection and review of course materials and resources.

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