A critical evaluation of the PSHEE healthy relationships and domestic abuse content and delivery

My research aims to critically evaluate the PSHEE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education) in secondary schools to understand whether young people's knowledge surrounding healthy relationships and domestic abuse is developed through the new content and teaching techniques. A strong focal point of the study will be the teaching methods used and how teacher-pupil relationships impact the way students interact with the educational materials. The study aims to generate rich and insightful data to analyse any changes in participant's attitudes and knowledge surrounding domestic abuse and to develop a theory of change to understand the mechanisms of attitudinal change in education regarding domestic abuse. Whilst evaluations of previous school based programmes on domestic abuse and healthy relationships have been positive (e.g. Sweetland et al, 2020), there still remains no formal evaluation of the new PHSEE content on domestic-abuse. Thus, although the new content introduced in UK schools in 2020 has great potential to transform young people's understanding of healthy/unhealthy relationships, without critical evaluation of content and delivery, the utility of the programme in changing young people's attitudes on domestic abuse will remain untested. This study will analyze the content, delivery, group interaction and impact of the new PHSEE content in four schools through observation, audio recording, questionnaires and interviews.

References
Sweetland, S., Skinner, T., Bloomfield-Utting, J., and Buxton-Beales, J., 2020. An Evaluative Study of Project CRUSH: Education, Young People, Healthy Relationships and Domestic Abuse [Online]. University of Bath. Available from: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/an-evaluative-study-of-project-crush-education-young-people-healt [Accessed 8 October 2021]