The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Change the Course (2017) report required universities to implement and report on their progress instituting a suite of wide-ranging reforms. While these changes are encouraging there is a distinct lack of attention - in the report and subsequent policies and programmes - to sexual misconduct by faculty/academics. Indeed, sexual violence appears to have been ‘framed’ as a ‘problem’ that exists only within the student body.
Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia successfully advocated for the development and implementation of a sexual violence prevention program targeting HDR supervisors. This program has been piloted with one of Australia’s leading universities and has been presented at the International Faculty and Staff Sexual Misconduct Conference in Madison, USA. Building on Moira Carmody’s influential approach to violence prevention and grounded in the National best practice standards for violence prevention education, the programme aims to promote both cultural and individual change by approaching academic sexual misconduct as an ethical issue.
This presentation details the programme’s theoretical framework, content and format which blends academic literature with experiential learning activities designed to enable critical reflection on ethical supervisory practices and to challenge accepted supervisory norms.