Curriculum and preventing dating violence in schools

Resumo

This paper presents a discuss between the findings from a two-fold national study on the acceptance of violence and the prevalence of victimization in intimate relationships among Portuguese adolescents and the possibility for integrating these themes in school curriculum. The survey includes a questionnaire (4562 participants) and focus groups with girls and boys from 4 different cities. Findings presented in this paper are crosscut with the three dimensions found as pertinent and relevant in the focus groups: masculinities and femininities, romantic love and adolescence sexualization and jealousy and control. Based on these findings, this article argues for the urgency of introducing intimate partner violence in the formal curriculum as part of citizen education.