Integrating the prevention of gender-based violence in curriculum design and development

A violence-prevention curriculum has been object of research on curriculum studies since several decades (Bergsgaard, 1997), but gender violence prevention had not yet received so much attention from this field of studies. In some countries, gender-based violence prevention is included in education for citizenship, in a wider view of education against gender stereotypes and prejudices (Andersson, 2012; Cox et al., 2010; Salcedo-Barrientos et al., 2012). Similarly, several studies have provided evidence about the role of schools in (re)producing masculinities and femininities (Mils 2001) as a cultural ground for gender and domestic violence. The role of school education as regulatory or emancipatory has also been discussed since the implementation of compulsory schooling when educators believed school education would liberate oppressed social groups (Ledwith, 2007; Sala, 2012). Nevertheless, less attention has been paid to teachers’ education on the subject and even less, how to integrate these subjects without overloading the school curriculum and the teachers’ work. UNESCO (2014) provides a guide for teachers, but it does not discuss how to integrate these contents in a school curriculum avoiding to produce a collection curriculum (Bernstein 1996) or a bank education (Freire, 1979). Gender-based crime primary prevention is an innovative strategy on prevention of violence, and its relevance has been established for long time (Wolfe & Jaffe, 1999). UMAR – Association of Women, Alternative and Response created a primary prevention program where preventing violence at schools is the goal (Magalhaes, Canotilho & Brasil 2007; see also Magalhaes, Canotilho & Ribeiro, 2010), using action-research as the philosophy in the intervention. Parallel to this intervention, the team also regularly provides data on dating violence (Guerreiro et al., 2015), articulating research, intervention and reflection in a programme that is intended to produce social change. Promoting violence prevention programs have to overcome limited time interventions, so UMAR is concerned on training education professionals to be able to prevent these types of crimes, promoting a primary prevention program at schools working with youth using art as methodology, to reach a peaceful society. At the same time UMAR implement the primary prevention program called "Artways – Educational Policies and Training against Violence and Juvenile Delinquency" on which students are the main target group. With Artways prevention is included in schools and curriculums of these youth are improved. At the same time we work with youth using art through discussion of movies, songs, promotion of paint and draw, using educative games and pedagogic strategies. In this paper, we will present the analysis of teacher training programme of UMAR in partnership with the FPCEUP, providing evidences of the possibilities and the difficulties of integrating gender-based violence prevention in school curriculum.