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Everyone's Safer: supporting effective leadership responses to harmful sexual behaviour in schools
Abstract
The report can be downloaded from: https://www.stopitnow.org.uk/professionals-looking-for-advice/help-for-schools/
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This research report describes the context, design, conduct and findings of an inquiry into young people’s and young adults’ experiences of relationships during the 2020-2021 Covid-19 lockdowns. The research was conducted in late 2021 through to mid-2022. In this report, we explore the conditions in which study participants’ digital interactions and communications developed and changed during the pandemic; investigate how lockdown intersected with and shaped their intimate digital cultures; and highlight the risks, rewards, pleasures and harms that unfold in these contexts.
Educating boys about consent in schools in England is required as part of the now-statutory Relationships, Sex, and Health Education curriculum and, moreover, is considered important for addressing sexual violence, abuse, and harassment among young people. The present paper draws on qualitative data collected in three schools in southeast England to explore how boys are being taught about consent and how they relate to and interpret educational messages about consent in terms of their sociosexual subjectivities and peer sexual cultures. Data was collected during May–June 2022 through classroom observations, focus groups with boys, and discussions with teachers in a co-educational academy, a boys’ academy, and a boys’ independent school, all in southeast England. The data suggests that while typical consent education messages may rationalise or provide a ‘road map’ for consent, the boys felt uncertain and anxious about navigating the perceived, often anticipated, realities of youth sexual culture. The framing of sexual activity as only consensual, and thus legitimate, if there is a clear and direct yes, conflicted with these realities. As supposed initiators of sex, as masculine heterosexual subjects, the boys felt a responsibility for obtaining consent yet seemed to lack confidence regarding the socio-affective skills required for doing so. The paper calls for an integrated model of consent education that addresses knowledge, skills (including emotional literacy), and the normative contextual contingencies that constrain the operation of free choice.
In England, the Children and Social Work Act (HMSO, 2017) bestowed compulsory status on relationships and sex education (RSE), which means that young people’s right to receive RSE has been codified in law. This paper analyzes how this right is upheld and enacted within the Department for Education (DfE) (2019) statutory guidance on RSE for schools in England. The analysis suggests that the guidance features contradictory discourses in which young people’s rights are ostensibly advanced, but remain structured by adult-centric, heteronormative understandings of sex and relationships. It upholds a decontextualized and legalistic approach to rights, responsibilities, informed choice, and decision making. A narrow conception of rights is particularly evident regarding young people’s digital sexual cultures, which are predominantly framed in terms of risk and harm. We argue that scholars should investigate how educators are designing and delivering RSE in light of the guidance, and the opportunities for and obstacles to a genuinely “rights-based” approach to RSE. While the policy discussed in this article is specific to England, the discussion has wider relevance for practitioners and policymakers across cultural and geographic contexts as it draws upon a model for analyzing how young people’s sexuality is presented and addressed in legislative and curricular documentation.
In 2020, student disclosure of sexual harm through the website “Everyone’s Invited” reignited discussions of sexual harm in schools with many calling for “zero tolerance” approaches to sexual harm. This article considers the impact of zero tolerance policies drawing upon school policies and practices, coupled with students experiences. The article draws upon findings from a mixed-methods study conducted from 2018–2020 within four local authority areas in England: focus groups with staff and students, surveys with students and parents, case review, observations, and school self-assessments. Analysis evidenced that where schools drew on punitive and sanctions-based approaches these impacted student disclosure, limited staff decision making, and were not seen to be effective by students. Rather than zero tolerance policies, the findings evidence the need to: tackle environments where sexual harm is tolerated; consider systemic barriers to disclosure, and expand what justice means for responses to sexual harm in schools.
Comprehensive sexual health education (SHE) programs are being implemented in many state and local jurisdictions. Much research has focused on the strength and effectiveness of such programs. However, the experiences of teachers and students in their implementation is underexplored. A case study of the implementation of the SHE policy and curriculum in Chicago Public Schools sought to explore teachers’ and students’ experiences. Sixteen teachers were interviewed and five student focus groups, including 46 students, were conducted. Both teachers and students identified opportunities to improve upon the current program, including to (1) incorporate more student-centered learning opportunities and allow for tailoring to each specific group of students; (2) use discussion and dialogue to encourage students’ exploration of their own opinions and identities and development of a sense of agency over their own learning; (3) shift focus from risk reduction to a more holistic focus on healthy sexual wellbeing; and (4) directly discuss current health inequities, contributing factors, and intersectionality. These findings align with a critical pedagogical approach and underscore the need to understand SHE implementation within its sociopolitical context. Implications of the use of critical pedagogy as a framework for SHE in Chicago and beyond are discussed.
As part of a project funded by the Wellcome Trust, we held a one-day symposium, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, to discuss priorities for research on relationships and sex education (RSE) in a world where young people increasingly live, experience, and augment their relationships (whether sexual or not) within digital spaces. The introduction of statutory RSE in schools in England highlights the need to focus on improving understandings of young people and digital intimacies for its own sake, and to inform the development of learning resources. We call for more research that puts young people at its centre; foregrounds inclusivity; and allows a nuanced discussion of pleasures, harms, risks, and rewards, which can be used by those working with young people and those developing policy. Generating such research is likely to be facilitated by participation, collaboration, and communication with beneficiaries, between disciplines and across sectors. Taking such an approach, academic researchers, practitioners, and policymakers agree that we need a better understanding of RSE’s place in lifelong learning, which seeks to understand the needs of particular groups, is concerned with non-sexual relationships, and does not see digital intimacies as disconnected from offline everyday ‘reality’.
This paper presents the findings of a secondary analysis of data collected during a pilot project, Change Up, which used a social norming approach (SNA) to address domestic violence and abuse (DVA) with young people aged 13–14. A SNA is based upon a well-articulated theory of behavior and evidence-based methodology for addressing social justice issues. This reflects a paradigm shift focusing upon strengths and positives, rather than pathologizing behaviors. Adopting a SNA, the Change Up project comprised a baseline survey followed by the intervention (workshop and peer-to-peer campaign), ending with a post-intervention survey. It was delivered in two high schools in a UK city between 2015 and 16. A secondary analysis of the survey data collected during the surveys and qualitative data collected at the end of each workshop was undertaken and this is reported here. Change Up data illustrates that most young people in the sample thought that DVA is unacceptable. There was, however, a gender difference in the norms held about the social acceptability of girls using physical violence against boys (and vice versa). The analysis of Change Up data indicates that a social norming approach to DVA programs aimed at young people can be successful in promoting attitude and behavior change. It also highlights a continuing need for young people’s education about relationships and gender equality.
Young people’s sexting is an area of increasing concern amongst parents, educationalists and policy makers, yet little research has been conducted with young people themselves to explore their perspectives on the support they need to navigate relationships in the new digital media landscape. To address this absence, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers undertook a participatory study with students, aged 13 to 15, in a UK secondary school. This paper outlines key study findings, including young people’s views on sexting, their recommendations for improved education around sexting in schools, their preferred sources of support, and their perspectives on the way adults should respond to young people’s sexting. Findings indicate that sexting education needs to be developed within the context of wider relationship issues, such as gender, power dynamics and trust between peers, and improved communication between students and teachers or other responsible adults. Findings may be used to consider ways of designing and communicating messages around sexting to young people within and beyond educational settings.
Previous research has demonstrated that college students who view TakeCARE, a video bystander program designed to encourage students to take action to prevent sexual and relationship violence (i.e., bystander behavior), display more bystander behavior relative to students who view a control video. The current study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by testing two different methods of administering TakeCARE and examining moderators of TakeCARE’s effects on bystander behavior. Students at four universities (n = 557) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (a) view TakeCARE in a monitored computer lab, (b) view TakeCARE at their own convenience after receiving an email link to the video, or (c) view a video about study skills (control group). Participants completed measures of bystander behavior at baseline and at a 1-month follow-up. Participants in both TakeCARE conditions reported more bystander behavior at follow-up assessments, compared with participants in the control condition. The beneficial effect of TakeCARE did not differ significantly across administration methods. However, the effects of TakeCARE on bystander behavior were moderated by students’ perceptions of campus responsiveness to sexual violence, with more potent effects when students perceived their institution as responsive to reports of sexual violence.
The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and cross-platform data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures.
Objectives
Sex and relationship education (SRE) is regarded as vital to improving young people’s sexual health, but a third of schools in England lacks good SRE and government guidance is outdated. We aimed to identify what makes SRE programmes effective, acceptable, sustainable and capable of faithful implementation.
Design
This is a synthesis of findings from five research packages that we conducted (practitioner interviews, case study investigation, National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, review of reviews and qualitative synthesis). We also gained feedback on our research from stakeholder consultations.
Settings
Primary research and stakeholder consultations were conducted in the UK. Secondary research draws on studies worldwide.
Results
Our findings indicate that school-based SRE and school-linked sexual health services can be effective at improving sexual health. We found professional consensus that good programmes start in primary school. Professionals and young people agreed that good programmes are age-appropriate, interactive and take place in a safe environment. Some young women reported preferring single-sex classes, but young men appeared to want mixed classes. Young people and professionals agreed that SRE should take a ‘life skills’ approach and not focus on abstinence. Young people advocated a ‘sex-positive’ approach but reported this was lacking. Young people and professionals agreed that SRE should discuss risks, but young people indicated that approaches to risk need revising. Professionals felt teachers should be involved in SRE delivery, but many young people reported disliking having their teachers deliver SRE and we found that key messages could become lost when interpreted by teachers. The divergence between young people and professionals was echoed by stakeholders. We developed criteria for best practice based on the evidence.
Conclusions
We identified key features of effective and acceptable SRE. Our best practice criteria can be used to evaluate existing programmes, contribute to the development of new programmes and inform consultations around statutory SRE.
Sexual violence is a major problem on college campuses and is associated with a range of negative health consequences for victims. Teaching students to intervene as prosocial bystanders has become a common element of sexual assault prevention efforts; although these programs have demonstrated positive effects on participants’ beliefs and knowledge, their impact on actual behavior is weaker. Understanding the factors that inhibit intervening in risky situations may enhance the effectiveness of bystander programs by identifying material that addresses these barriers. A sample of 281 first-year college students indicated whether they had encountered 10 situations that may present elevated risk of sexual or physical assault since arriving on campus, and if so, whether they had done something to intervene. If they had not intervened, they were asked to identify the barriers that had inhibited them. Participants also completed measures of two factors proposed to predict bystander behavior, self-efficacy and emotion regulation. A majority of participants intervened in most of the situations, but only 27% of participants intervened in every situation they encountered. Men and women differed in the barriers they identified most frequently across situations, with men endorsing Perceived Responsibility more often than women, and women reporting Skill Deficits more often than men. Neither men nor women perceived Audience Inhibition to be a significant barrier; it was salient in only one of the 10 situations. Students higher in global bystander self-efficacy were more likely to intervene and less likely to report barriers related to skill deficits and perceived responsibility. These results suggest that existing bystander intervention programs efforts can be improved by fostering a greater sense of collective responsibility in students and teaching specific intervention behaviors.
Objectives
Although sex and relationship education (SRE) represents a key strand in policies to safeguard young people and improve their sexual health, it currently lacks statutory status, government guidance is outdated and a third of UK schools has poor-quality SRE. We aimed to investigate whether current provision meets young people's needs.
Design
Synthesis of qualitative studies of young people's views of their school-based SRE.
Setting
Eligible studies originated from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil and Sweden.
Participants
Studies of students aged 4–19 in full-time education, young adults ≤19 (not necessarily in full-time education) or adults ≤25 if recalling their experiences of school-based SRE.
Results
–69 publications were identified, with 55 remaining after quality appraisal (representing 48 studies). The synthesis found that although sex is a potent and potentially embarrassing topic, schools appear reluctant to acknowledge this and attempt to teach SRE in the same way as other subjects. Young people report feeling vulnerable in SRE, with young men anxious to conceal sexual ignorance and young women risking sexual harassment if they participate. Schools appear to have difficulty accepting that some young people are sexually active, leading to SRE that is out of touch with many young people's lives. Young people report that SRE can be negative, gendered and heterosexist. They expressed dislike of their own teachers delivering SRE due to blurred boundaries, lack of anonymity, embarrassment and poor training.
Conclusions
SRE should be ‘sex-positive’ and delivered by experts who maintain clear boundaries with students. Schools should acknowledge that sex is a special subject with unique challenges, as well as the fact and range of young people's sexual activity, otherwise young people will continue to disengage from SRE and opportunities for safeguarding and improving their sexual health will be reduced.
Objective: This study evaluates the effectiveness of bystander sexual assault prevention education when the training of peer educators and delivery of prevention workshops were embedded in the undergraduate curriculum. Method: Participants were 827 undergraduate students (intervention, n = 518; control, n = 309). In a quasi-experimental design, students completed online surveys at 3 time points (baseline, 1-week postintervention and 4-month follow-up). Outcome measures included efficacy, readiness to change, intentions, perceived barriers to intervention, and behavior related to bystander interventions to sexual assault. Results: The intervention was effective in increasing students' bystander efficacy, improving readiness to intervene by decreasing beliefs consistent with precontemplation and increasing those related to action, increasing intention to intervene, decreasing perceived skills deficits and concern about what others would think, and increasing proactive bystander behavior. The effects of the intervention were present for men and women and were observed in friendship and stranger contexts. All effects were maintained to 4-months without a booster. Conclusions: Integrating the preparation of peer educators and bystander-type sexual assault prevention workshops into the undergraduate curriculum can produce positive changes in male and female students' confidence, readiness, and capacity to act as prosocial bystanders for friends and strangers, and increase some bystander behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record
Background:
Sexual and reproductive rights include access to accurate and appropriate information in order to make informed decisions. In the current age of media globalization and Internet, adolescents are exposed to information about sexual health and sexuality from a myriad of sources. The objective of this study was to explore sources of information and adolescent learning about sexual health and sexuality in Santiago, Chile.
Methods:
Data collection included four focus group discussions with a total of 24 adolescents 18-19 years old, 20 semi-structured interviews with adolescents 16-19 years old, and seven interviews with key informants working with adolescents. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analysed using content analysis.
Results:
The primary sources of sexual health and sexuality information were parents, teachers and friends, whilst secondary sources included health professionals for females and Internet for males. Information provided by the trusted sources of parents, teachers and health professionals tended to focus on biological aspects of sexuality, particularly pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Limited emphasis was placed on topics such as love, attraction, pleasure, relationships, abstinence and sexual violence. Information focused primarily on heterosexual relations and reproduction. Adolescents learnt about relationships and sexual acts through friends, partners and, for many males, pornography. Findings indicate a lack of available information on partner communication, setting personal limits, and contraception, including morally neutral and medically correct information about emergency contraception.
Conclusions:
This study highlights numerous gaps between adolescent information needs and information provided by parents, teachers and health professionals. The priority these trusted sources place on providing biological information overshadows learning about emotional and relational aspects of sexuality. This biological rationalization of adolescent sexual behaviour neglects the way gender inequality, peer-pressure, coercion, media eroticization and religion influence adolescent sexual decision-making. The heteronormativity of information excludes other sexual orientations and disregards the diverse spectrum of human sexual behaviours. Finally, the limited provision of practical information hinders development of skills necessary for ensuring safe, consensual and pleasurable sexual relations. Trusted adults are encouraged to engage adolescents in critical reflection on a broad range of sexuality topics, dispelling myths, and building knowledge and skills necessary to make informed decisions.
For over a decade, battles have raged between conservative Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) sexuality education advocates and liberal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) advocates. While these battles have focused on the inclusion of health information about contraception and whether or not a curriculum must advocate abstinence as the best and only method to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, these debates have often ignored other important values about sex. In this article, Sharon Lamb reviews the recent history of these sexuality education battles, criticizes both AOUM and CSE curricula, and discusses how, in CSE's accommodation to AOUM objections, ethical dimensions of sex education may have been neglected in favor of evidence-based practice. She then suggests ways in which the current curricula could teach ethical reasoning and make sex education a form of citizenship education, focusing on justice, equity, and caring for the other person as well as the self.
Evidence suggests that interventions to engage bystanders in violence prevention increase bystander intentions and efficacy to intervene, yet the impact of such programs on violence remains unknown. This study compared rates of violence by type among undergraduate students attending a college campus with the Green Dot bystander intervention (n = 2,768) with students at two colleges without bystander programs (n = 4,258). Violent victimization rates were significantly (p < .01) lower among students attending the campus with Green Dot relative to the two comparison campuses. Violence perpetration rates were lower among males attending the intervention campus. Implications of these results for research and practice are discussed.
This research set out to explore how young people could contribute to sexual health curriculum development, in order to increase the relevance of such curricula to school children. The aim was to facilitate young Irish people, through a participatory research methodology, to generate, collate and present their views on effective sex education. Developing a way to elicit youthful voices creates the possibility for those voices to be heard by those in power - without adult censure. There were 394 participants aged between 15 and 18 years. The participants made their data accessible to adults with the creation of 62 'Webs'. The young people stated it was vital that sex education allow them access to factual information. The issues that they wished to gain knowledge on ranged from how to establish healthy respectful, communicative relationships, knowing how babies are made, when one's ready physically and emotionally for sex, how to put a condom on, who to go to for information and how best to talk about sexual issues. They wanted to be taught by people whom they can trust to deliver information accurately, confidentially and with confidence. The rich data reflected and respected the young peoples' perspective without resort to adult interpretations.
An experimental study evaluated the efficacy of a sexual assault risk-reduction program on 279 college women that focused on learning characteristics of male perpetrators and teaching bystander intervention techniques. After seeing The Women's Program, participants reported significantly greater bystander efficacy and significantly greater willingness to help than before seeing the program. Participants outperformed a control group. Rape myth acceptance also declined among program participants. Implications for rape awareness programming are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This chapter explores the complex and contradictory nature of political masculinities within efforts to engage men and boys in the prevention of men’s violence against women. It discusses findings from 14 expert-informant interviews with activists who have played an influential role in developing this work in the UK context. These interviews drew attention to how, for male agents of pro-feminist change, political masculinities are also profoundly personal. Transformations in the self are thus as important as bringing about change in others in this work − otherwise men risk reproducing the same patriarchal inequalities that they seek to dismantle. One significant barrier to critical self-reflection for men involved in preventing violence against women is that of disassociation; a perception and construction of oneself as being separate from the problem in relation to other men, men’s violence itself, and patriarchal relations. Resisting disassociation is therefore vital in order for pro-feminist men to recognise how they continue to be implicated the perpetuation of violence against women. This requires male agents of change to move beyond a sense of shame about their position within patriarchy − and to understand how they engage in political masculinities as they work to prevent men’s violence against women.
This paper examines the efficacy of sexual violence prevention education (SVPE) in the USA and Australasia: areas, which have some of the worst rates for sexual violence prevalence, globally. Paradoxically, they are also at the forefront of innovations in sexual violence prevention, compared to some European countries where SVPE is virtually non-existent or at the embryonic stage, such as the UK. Drawing upon the Authors’ previous research on the delivery of SVPE in New Zealand secondary schools, and literature reviews into these innovations, the authors argue that social work education is ideally placed to develop SVPE, due to the ways that some of these innovations, coalesce with social work theory, critical andragogy, and social work values. These synergies have the potential for transnational application through the ways that they can inform SVPE in those countries where it is delivered by social workers in schools, and via the ways it can enhance the social work curriculum to improve post-qualifying practice in addressing sexual violence (SV).
Internationally young people report experiencing sexual abuse and violence within schools. Developments within the field of adolescent sexual harm are increasingly recognising the need for ecological approaches to harm. Yet, to date, interventions with young people displaying harmful sexual behaviours have prioritised individual behaviours and characteristics over place-based interventions.
This article presents empirical evidence from a mixed-methods study aimed at understanding the enablers and barriers to preventing and responding to harmful sexual behaviour in schools. Research was carried out in seven schools and four multi-agency partnerships in England, UK. Using evidence from focus groups, observations, case reviews and policy analysis the article outlines nine components that enable, or are barriers to, effective responses and interventions into harmful sexual behaviour in schools. The paper concludes that responses and interventions into harmful sexual behaviour must move beyond responding to individual behaviours to intervening within factors within schools themselves.
Peer-sexual abuse in educational settings is a matter of international concern – featured in mainstream news reports, televised through drama series and documented in research. In 2018 the UK government revised and published a series of policy documents to assist schools in addressing the phenomenon. This paper considers the sufficiency of this policy framework through social field analysis of focus groups with staff and students at seven educational establishments in England that ran from 2015 to 2017. Analysis reveals four avenues through which staff and students created or reinforced norms the underpinned harmful sexual behaviours and in doing so created contexts conducive with peer-sexual abuse. While policy developments have made initial acknowledgements of school cultures as associated to peer-sexual abuse, significant progress is required if policy is to provide a framework that challenges, rather than reinforces, individualised – and on occasion victim-blaming – narratives of peer-sexual abuse.
This study examined the process by which a web-based sexual violence (SV) prevention program (i.e., RealConsent) prevents SV perpetration and increases bystander behaviors. Data from 743 college men who participated in a randomized controlled trial were analyzed. Simple and multiple-mediation models were estimated, using several theoretical constructs to assess the mechanisms through which RealConsent produced significant effects on SV perpetration and prosocial bystander or intervening behaviors. The results indicated that knowledge of effective consent for sex, hostility toward women, date rape attitudes, and hyper-gender male ideology significantly mediated the effects of RealConsent on SV perpetration in the multiple-mediator model. Furthermore, intentions to intervene significantly mediated the effects of RealConsent on prosocial bystander behaviors in the multiple-mediator model. The results show that the RealConsent program works to prevent SV perpetration and prosocial bystander behaviors via several theoretically proposed mediators central to the development and content of the program. The results also provide strong evidence that SV and bystander education for college men may benefit from including an explicit focus on decreasing negative norms related to women (e.g., hostility, date rape attitudes, hyper-gender ideology) and through increasing college men’s knowledge of consent and intentions to intervene.
Children’s sexting is presented as an emergent outcome of technology-based innovation in children’s peer-to-peer relations. We argue that it calls for creative responses that draw on adults’ and children’s understandings and views and on exchanges of these. We describe, and make the case for, intergenerational co-learning as a practice that could foster such creativity, as a pathway for children’s participation in the debate, and as a means by which media regulators, children’s service providers, and social media companies can consider and address their capabilities and responsibilities.
Sexual assault is a part of many students’ experiences in higher education. In U.S. universities, one in four women and one in ten men report being sexually assaulted before graduation. Bystander training programmes have been shown to modestly reduce campus sexual assault. Like all public health interventions, however, they have unintended social consequences; this research examines how undergraduate men on one campus understand bystander interventions and how those understandings shape their actual practices. We draw on ethnographic data collected between August 2015 and January 2017 at Columbia University and Barnard College. Our findings show that university training and an earnest desire to be responsible lead many men to intervene in possible sexual assaults. However, students’ gendered methods target more socially vulnerable and socially distant men while protecting popular men and those to whom they are socially connected. Students’ actual bystander practices thus reproduce social hierarchies in which low prestige may or may not be connected to actual risks of sexual assault. These results suggest that understanding intragroup dynamics and social hierarchies is essential to assault prevention in universities and that students’ actions as bystanders may be effective at preventing assaults in some circumstances but may lead to new risks of sexual assault.
Objective
To test the effectiveness of a college student-driven sexual consent education campaign to improve college students’ sexual consent understanding.
Participants
Undergraduate students (N = 992) at a large, public Midwestern university between March and December 2015.
Methods
Three online survey questionnaires assessing relevant outcome measures were distributed to the university's undergraduate student population before, during, and after the campaign's implementation over two consecutive academic semesters.
Results
Exposure to the campaign and the sexual consent understanding of the student population improved over time. College men and members of university-affiliated social sororities or fraternities resulted in greater improvement than their respective counterparts (i.e., college women, non-members).
Conclusions
Sexual consent education campaigns for college students that are student-driven and address relevant sociocultural factors while authentically interacting with students can improve students’ sexual consent understanding. These type of campaigns also have the opportunity to reach historically hard-to-reach audiences, such as college men.
Sexual assault on university campuses has garnered increased attention in recent years. A systematic review was conducted to identify the factors associated with bystander intervention regarding sexual assault on university campuses. Currently, no published systematic reviews exist within this area. Twenty-eight studies were reviewed according to four major bystander factors: rape myth and date rape attitudes; bystander efficacy; bystander intent; and bystander behavior. There was a heavy emphasis on bystander intent and behavior throughout. Three important limitations were identified: (1) all empirical research has been conducted in the USA, yet bystander intervention programs exist outside of the USA, in countries such as the UK, (2) a majority of the studies employed quantitative methodologies and so failed to capture important details such as bystanders' perceptions of sexual assault or what other factors influence the likelihood of intervening, and (3) there were limited attempts to control for factors such as social desirability. This area of research is still in its infancy. Future research should examine in greater detail the factors inhibiting and facilitating bystander intervention. Finally, research outside of the USA is important in developing the literature in this area to effectively inform bystander intervention programs.
Identifying predictors of bystander behaviors and sexual assertiveness can help to inform sexual assault prevention programs on college campuses. College sorority members (N = 141) completed measures of sexual assault history, rape myth acceptance, bystander self-efficacy, sexual assertiveness, and bystander behaviors before attending The Women's Program, which is a bystander-based sexual assault prevention program. Regression analyses were conducted. Lower rape myth acceptance and greater bystander self-efficacy predicted more engagement in bystander behaviors and higher sexual assertiveness. A total of 28 participants completed a 2-week follow-up survey that included measures of rape myth acceptance, bystander self-efficacy, and sexual assertiveness. T-test analyses were conducted. Rape myth acceptance was significantly lower among participants at 2-week follow-up compared to baseline. Implications for sexual assault prevention on college campuses are discussed.
Sex, Ethics, and Young People explores how young people determine their expectations from a sexual relationship. Bringing together research and education on sexuality and sexual assault prevention, Carmody explains how the six week skill-based Sex & Ethics program, based in Australia and New Zealand, can provide a curriculum of sexual education, and the skills needed by educators to run the program successfully. Research conducted with men and women enrolled in the program demonstrate how a focus on the education of sexuality, sexual ethics, and violence prevention can have a lasting impact on young people developing ethical sexual relationships. Includes updated evaluation data and wider application of ideas and chapters on becoming an educator.
Dating violence is a significant problem for older adolescents with implications for the survivor's health. Survivors disclose the violence to friends who are often ill equipped to help them manage the consequences. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of Friends Helping Friends, a community-level education program to teach older adolescents to recognize and intervene in dating violence. A convenience sample of 101 students aged 18 to 22 years were nonrandomly allocated to a treatment or control group and completed pre- and post-test measures. Compared with the control group, treatment group participants reported increased perceived responsibility to help, skills to act as a bystander, and intention to help and decreased rape myth acceptance. Friends Helping Friends shows promise as an effective strategy for older adolescent females in the prevention and response to dating violence.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In this essay I describe the history of media education in the UK, tracing its evolution from its Leavisite origins, through the advent of cultural studies to the more explicitly political approaches developed in the 1970s. These approaches reflect a gradual democratization of the curriculum, as well as a form of cultural or political protectionism. I also discuss recent moves beyond this approach, resulting from changing views of young people's relationships with the media, and from classroom-based research. I outline the conceptual framework of contemporary media education and discuss the unresolved questions about learning and pedagogy.
Sexuality education and preventive sexual abuse education emerged from different historical moments and social movements. Consequently, they are often taught as separate subjects in secondary schools. This paper seeks to highlight how this separation denies space for young people to grapple with the concept of consent, the art of negotiation, the interrelatedness and acknowledgement of pleasure, danger and ambivalence within sexually intimate relations and the complexities of sexualities. Importantly, this separation also negates possibilities for education to embrace a discourse of ethical erotics that includes space for the exploration of desire and pleasure; for it is not possible to discuss ethical erotics when one is not allowed to discuss ethics and erotics within the same conversation. To highlight this argument, we analyse the Health and Physical Education Curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand which states that programmes for the prevention of sexual abuse should not be taught concurrently or consecutively with programmes that emphasise the positive aspects of sexuality.
Recent research documents the problem of sexual violence across communities, often finding its causes to be embedded in community and cultural norms, thus demonstrating the need for community-focused solutions. In this article we synthesize research from community psychology on community change and prevention with more individually focused studies of sexual violence prevention programs and bystander behavior in emergency and crime situations. The purpose of bringing together this research is to outline a new area of focus for sexual violence prevention: the mobilization of prosocial behavior on the part of potential bystanders. This approach has utility for increasing community receptivity to prevention messages, by decreasing resistance to them, and for increasing the likelihood of community members taking an active role in prevention and intervention. The specific case of sexual violence prevention on college campus communities illustrates this approach. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comm Psychol 32: 61–79, 2004.
The bystander intervention approach is gaining popularity as a means for engaging communities in sexual assault prevention, especially on college campuses. Many bystander programs are teaching community members how to intervene without first assisting them to identify the full range of opportunities when they can intervene. In this article, the authors review the literature on sexual violence bystander intervention and present a conceptual framework that lays out a continuum of bystander opportunities ranging from reactive situations after an assault has occurred, to situations before an assault has occurred (posing high to low risk to victims), as well as proactive situations where no risk to the victim is present. The implications of this typology are discussed in the context of program development, evaluation, and further research.
Keeping children safe in education 2022: Statutory guidance for schools and colleges
- J Demant
- M B Heinskou
Demant, J., & Heinskou, M.B. (2011). Taking a chance: Sex, alcohol and acquaintance rape. Young, 19(4),
397-415. Department for Education. (2022). Keeping children safe in education 2022: Statutory guidance
for schools and colleges. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/1101454/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2022.pdf
Contextual safeguarding: An overview of the operational, strategic and conceptual framework
- C E Firmin
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