Educational interventions to prevent gender violence in schools are proliferating but results do not always demonstrate improvement in children’s lives. Consequently, teachers feel they are not sufficiently prepared to be able to intervene in cases of gender-based violence at school (Ajduković et al., 2021) or to select the best actions to implement that will result in violence-free contexts. The improvement of education is related to the teacher’s training (Diery et al., 2021) and it is essential for it to be based on scientific evidence (Roca-Campos et al., 2021;Rodríguez-Oramas et al., 2021).

The present paper is part of the initial phase of a European project entitled ANONYMIZED (CERV-2022-DAPHNE; 2023–2025), one of whose objectives was to build capacity within the teaching profession. To this end, three teacher education pilot seminars were organised in Spain and Portugal with the aim of co-creating didactic materials to prevent gender-based violence in schools. Universities and teacher education institutions developed these materials for the consortium so that they could become Open Access didactic resources at the European level.The aim of the study was twofold: on the one hand, to analyse how the materials were discussed and dialogically constructed; and on the other hand, to explore the positive implications that dialogue and co-creation had on teachers’ awareness and reflections regarding the co-created materials. The study therefore highlights the importance of co-creation as a relevant approach to be considered in teacher education.

Co-creation refers to the elaboration of knowledge with the inclusion of the participants and stakeholders interested in the results. Currently, it is already an essential requirement for research funded by the European Commission (Flecha et al., 2018). Developing teachers’ abilities as agents of inclusion and social justice involves working in collaboration with other stakeholders (Pantić & Florian, 2015). In this sense, several scientific disciplines are already working co-creatively. Different examples can be found in Health Sciences, where, on the one hand, the need for continuous co-creation and stakeholder collaboration is underlined in order to design solutions “with stakeholders and not only for them” (van de Riet et al., 2024, p. 5) and, on the other hand, it is remarked the possible transformative impact of including patients as co-researchers. However, co-creation has not been very present until know in teacher education. In fact, historically, the didactic material has been designed by “educational experts”, without consulting the reality of schools or considering the experience of teachers (ten Dam & Blom, 2006). Although collaborative projects in teacher education have increased in last years  (Jarl et al., 2024),we could not find any research that analyses co-creation processes in the development of didactic materials based on scientific evidence of social impact on the prevention of gender-based violence. Additionally, scientific evidence has shown that ensuring the importance of knowledge co-creation has a great impact on education in various educational contexts (Carballido et al., 2024). This paper makes a novel contribution by analysing the co-creation process of didactic material for teacher education in the prevention of gender violence and its positive implications. 

The study followed the approach of the Communicative Methodology, which is grounded in the egalitarian dialogue between researchers and end-users. The participants of the study consisted of 77 people who took part in the development of online pilot seminars and in the process of co-creation of the didactic materials for the prevention of gender-based violence based on scientific evidence of social impact, including various agents of the educational community: teachers, teacher educators and researchers, among others. Pilot seminars were developed in February 2024 via ZOOM and recorded with the consent of the participants both in Spain and Portugal. The pilot in Portugal included initial and continuous teacher education and the pilot in Spain was on continuous education. The materials co-created in these sessions were subsequently used in training for primary and secondary school teachers. These trainings included three online sessions of 90 min that were held in April and May 2024. Participants were asked to check the material with their own experience in all possible educational aspects. Participants had the opportunity to review the didactic materials throughout the week and were provided with an online form to register their comments if desired. The shared material consisted of, on the one hand, two documents where the first one is about the trainings’ general guidelines and the second one, more specific, is about the orientations of each slide of the presentations. On the other hand, 10 Power Point presentations were shared, 3–4 for each session. At these Power Points different topics related to the scientific evidence of social impact on the preventive socialisation of gender violence were discussed: existing hoaxes in gender violence, open access resources, zero violence brave club, isolating gender violence, among other topics. The participants’ contributions were collected in the same seminars and, for those who wanted or were more comfortable, through an online form for each session. The co-creation process of the pilot seminars was recorded and subsequently transcribed in order to facilitate data analysis. These data were analysed, on the one hand, with the aim of finding out how the co-creation process of didactic materials had developed and, on the other hand, with the purpose of identifying the positive implications that this dialogic process, based on scientific evidence of social impact, between different educational agents had had on the participant teachers.

Throughout the sessions, participants actively engaged in the review and improvement of the shared didactic materials. Following their individual analyses and the collective dialogue grounded in the scientific evidence underpinning the materials, participants contributed in multiple ways to their enhancement. These contributions ranged from the identification and correction of minor typographical errors and mistranslations to more substantive suggestions, such as adjustments to the sequencing and timing of specific contents or learning activities. Such recommendations were often informed by participants’ previous professional experience in teacher education and classroom practice, thereby ensuring that the materials were not only theoretically sound but also pedagogically feasible and relevant. The co-creation process of didactic materials for teacher education in the field of gender-based violence prevention resulted in the generation of new applied knowledge. The final version of the materials emerged from a dialogic process in which teachers, teacher educators, and other educational professionals collectively discussed, negotiated, and refined the initial proposals presented to them. This process of dialogue, correction, and proposal-making enabled the transformation of preliminary materials into shared resources that reflected both scientific evidence and practitioners’ experiential knowledge. Furthermore, participation in the pilot seminars fostered meaningful reflection and increased awareness among the teaching staff regarding gender-based violence and its prevention in educational contexts. Engaging in co-creation encouraged participants to critically examine their own assumptions, practices, and responsibilities as educators, thereby contributing to their professional learning and ethical commitment. Findings highlight the importance of incorporating teachers’ voices into the co-creation of didactic materials and the central role of education—specifically teacher education—in the prevention of gender-based violence in schools. Given that teachers are among the primary agents responsible for identifying, addressing, and preventing gender-based violence in educational settings, their active involvement in the development of pedagogical resources is both necessary and highly valuable.

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