Sexuality in the Science Classroom: One teacher's methods in a college biology course

One concern when teaching a college biology course is how to deal with sex and sexuality. The 'safe' answer is to reduce the topics to anatomy and hormone cycles. However, 'safe' does not meet the needs of students who are or will be sexually active; nor does it adequately serve those who plan to work in athletic training or the health sciences. This article discusses the author's goals for sexuality education within the science classroom: (1) to create a safe and inclusive environment; (2) to fully teach the anatomy and physiology of the reproductive systems; (3) to help the students develop critical thinking skills; and (4) to help the students become aware of how issues of sexuality relate to their chosen fields. The article goes on to discuss the author's experience of teaching sexuality education within a science classroom.     

Students teach sex education: introducing alternative conceptions of sexuality

In this paper, we describe an exercise that challenges hetero-normative and sexist notions of sexuality, allowing students to envision alternative models. Research shows how active learning eases student anxiety over challenging or threatening material. After reading Jessica Fields' Risky Lessons and Waskul, Vannini, and Weisen's article entitled ‘Women and Their Clitoris’, students designed a sex education curriculum that challenges conventional methods. Beyond critiquing existing sex education models, this exercise provides a space for students to reflect on their own sex education experiences, develop their own ideas for teaching about sex and become comfortable discussing sex and sexuality with their peers. All but one of the students reported finding the activity enjoyable or interesting. More than half of students reported change in their views about sex and sex education as a result of the activity.     

Closing Sex Education's Knowledge/Practice Gap: The reconceptualisation of young people's sexual knowledge

In rethinking what is theoretically conceived as a 'gap' between what young people learn in sexuality education and what they do in practice, this article argues for the need to comprehend young people's sexual knowledge from their own conceptualisation of this. Drawing on empirical findings from research with New Zealanders aged 17-19, young people's own understandings of their sexual knowledge are explored. These findings indicate how young people in the study conceptualised sexual knowledge in two ways: as information derived from secondary sources such as sexuality education, and knowledge gleaned from personal sexual experience. Hierarchies were evident within and between such types of sexual knowledge, in terms of the status young people afforded, and the interest they displayed in them. The type of sexual knowledge young people were most interested in, and which they identified as lacking in sexuality education, centred on a 'discourse of erotics'. It is argued that the inclusion of this discourse within sexuality education programmes might offer one way of closing the knowledge/practice gap, by raising the status of sexuality education's messages for young people and drawing this information closer to their lived sexual experiences.     

Lesbian and gay teachers and sex/uality education policy enactment in schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines lesbian and gay teachers’ identities and experiences in schools in the context of school policies relating to homophobia and to sex and sexuality education. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 lesbian and gay teachers working in English and Welsh schools, and using the concept of ‘policy enactment’, I analyse the ways in which school policies around homo/bi/transphobic bullying and sex/uality education and their enactment are perceived by lesbian and gay teachers. The article examines teachers’ personal experiences in relation to sexuality in school, and then broadens out into related issues for pupils and a discussion of the varied approaches to sex and relationships education in the schools. I argue that the enactment of these policies is not straightforward, and that they could be better supported by a more inclusive and comprehensive sexuality education curriculum.     

A convenient dichotomy: critical eyes on the limits to biological knowledge

In The Secret Identity of a Biology Textbook: straight and naturally sexed, Jesse Bazzul and Heather Sykes conduct a case study of a biology textbook as an oppressive instructional material. Using queer theory they explore how the text of the biology textbook produces “truths” about sex, gender, and sexuality. Their analysis is complemented by the Forum papers by Jay Lemke and Francis Broadway who broaden the analysis examining the way that what counts as knowledge in science is a political decision while also encouraging authors, including Bazzul and Sykes, to also look critically at their own theoretical lenses. In this paper I pull together their ideas while exploring cultural contexts for a more nuanced representation of biological knowledge and the politics of what it means to know science.     

Out of Harmony on the Cherokee Boundary: Clinics,culture and the sex ed curriculum

Based upon fieldwork on the Cherokee Boundary in the USA during the mid-1990s, the author explores why a community that supported a teen health clinic and whose high school curriculum met the state standards for sexuality education continued to have a teen pregnancy rate that was one of the highest in western North Carolina. In the process, this study examines the conflicting views about adolescent sexuality, particularly teen pregnancy and homosexuality, held by Cherokee progressives and traditionalists as well as the resulting contradictory approaches to sex education within a community that values harmony. Arguing that the tribe's education policies worked at cross-purposes, the author details the mismatch between the school's sex education curriculum and health clinic vis-à-vis students' sexual interests, knowledge, and behaviors. Difficulties in integrating native culture and an absence of communication further inhibited the policies' effectiveness. Paradoxically, by avoiding the disharmonious issue of sexuality education, the community has become further out of harmony.     

The Sexual Politics of the Curriculum: contesting values

ABSTRACT

This paper arises out of our current work investigating the construction of male and female students’ sexual/gender relations within school arenas. A main concern is to explore recent empirical and theoretical work on sexuality, in an attempt to critique the New Right moralism with its own contradictory form of pluralism. At the same time a critical examination of the sexual politics of the curriculum may serve to rethink the underlying values of the old dichotomies around liberal and radical modes of progressive education with reference to curriculum change. Key areas of debate include the contextualisation of sex/sexuality within schools, sexual harassment, the normalisation of heterosexualities and sex/sexuality education. We have found it useful to hold onto the tension between materialist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of the formation of sexual subjectivities, without attempting to resolve the contradictions between them.     

Young Cypriots on sex education: sources and adequacy of information received on sexuality issues

Introduction: In the absence of standardised sex education and because schools usually limit their teaching to the ‘health’ aspects of sexuality, young people in Cyprus rely on their peers and the media for information on sexuality. This study examines the sources and adequacy of the information received by young people from various sources on matters related to sexuality and sexual health.

Method: Twelve in‐depth interviews were conducted in Cyprus in 2005 with purposively chosen boys and girls aged 15–18 years using a semi‐structured discussion guide. The interviews focused on participants' knowledge of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, safer sex, contraception and abortion. They also explored attitudes and beliefs concerning relationships, homosexuality and mutual consent.

Results: Information about sexual health is primarily received from school in classes that interviewees considered dull or irrelevant. Television, and to a lesser degree magazines, were the main sources of information on sexual relationships, the sexual act, homosexuality and abortion. Sexually transmitted infection knowledge was limited and often erroneous, while attitudes towards contraception use, abortion and homosexuality suggest that negative stereotypes are widespread.

Conclusions: Because the information young people receive on sexuality appears to be inadequate, there is an urgent need to implement comprehensive, evidence‐based sex education in the public schools. It should also address the nature and content of the sexual and reproductive health messages received from peers and the media.     

Learners’ perspectives on Life Orientation sexuality education in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article examines the views of male and female learners regarding how Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education is taught at their schools. Learners in the study were selected from five former ‘Black’ schools in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. Focus groups were used to identify what learners could recall about their LO sexuality education classes. The strong trend in the data speaks to how LO sexuality education implies a gendered, heteronormative and moralistic approach to youth sexuality which silences and negates same sex relationships and girls’ accounts of sexuality. Although LO sexuality curricula are, as crafted on paper, often sophisticated learning programmes, participants point to a disjuncture between the official LO sexuality education curriculum and how LO sexuality education is taught in the studied schools. The paper concludes with some specific recommendations for teachers to promote a non-judgemental approach to sexuality education that challenges heteronormativity and other gendered injustices as part of the teaching of LO sexuality education.     

Chastity for democracy: Surplus repression and the rhetoric of sex education

Moving from opposition to participation, the Adolescent Family Life Act (1981) and the development of abstinence education marks the conservative movement's pivot to a rhetorical strategy of tolerance that enabled it to coopt the public culture of sex discourse. Working from Herbert Marcuse's theory of “surplus repression,” I argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity. The AFLA is significant in the rhetorical history of sex education because it demarcates the transition to a productive form of biopolitics that sought to manage sexuality by instrumentalizing rather than censuring bodily desire. Conservative sex talk illustrates how Eros—transgressive, creative, and erotic desires—is channeled into the discursive production of hyper-functional subjects invested in their own subjugation.     

Managing Sex Education Controversy Deep in the Heart of Texas: A Case Study of the North East Independent School District (NEISD)

Abstract

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), one of the key evidence-based strategies in our programmatic toolbox to address adolescent pregnancy and birth rates, remains a politically-charged issue countrywide. Though there is some funding available at the federal level, there are no national policies mandating the provision of sex education; as such, most decision-making occurs at the state or even the local level. Consequently, the provision of sex education and the quality and comprehensiveness of curricula used to do so are highly variable across the country, and are heavily influenced by the level of support or resistance in communities. This paper analyzes the experience of institutionalizing an evidence-based sex education in a large suburban school district in San Antonio, Texas, a socially conservative context. Understanding the politics of sex education is key to developing effective policies and strategies to ensure quality sex education programs are provided in public schools. However, there are no published papers documenting specific experiences with resistance to sex education in local communities in the USA. Given this, the strategies employed by opponents and the response by district officials can be informative for other school settings in the USA and around the world.

Abbreviations: AFLA: Adolescent Family Life Act; CHAMPSS: Choosing And Maintaining effective Programs for Sex education in Schools Model; CSE: Comprehensive sexuality education; DTL/RTL: Draw the Line/Respect the Line; HSAE: Human Sexuality and Abstinence Education, the middle school sex education curriculum in NEISD prior to 2008; NEISD: North East Independent School District; SAFA: San Antonio Family Association; SHAC: School health advisory council; STI: Sexually transmitted infection; TEC: Texas Education Code; TPIA: Texas Public Information Act; USA: United States of America; UTHSC: University of Texas Health Science Center     

Teachers' attitudes towards adolescent sexuality and life skills education in rural South Africa

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes towards young people's sexuality and pregnant students, and focused on girls' perceived irresponsible behaviour instead of strategies to minimise HIV risk. Despite general awareness of the HIV epidemic, few teachers perceived it as an immediate threat, and teachers' own HIV risk was infrequently acknowledged. Teachers perceived themselves to have higher personal standards and moral authority than members of the communities and schools they served. Male administrators' authority to determine school policies and teachers' attitudes towards sexuality fundamentally affect the content and delivery of school-based sexuality education and HIV prevention activities. Opportunities to create a supportive educational environment for students and for female teachers are frequently missed. Improving teachers' efficacy to deliver impartial, non-judgemental and accurate information about sex and HIV is essential, as are efforts to acknowledge and address their own HIV risks.     

Thinking in sex education: reading prohibition through the film Desire

This paper argues that sex education must move beyond a focus on compliance so that we may risk the uncertain work of thinking. How might we understand the work of thinking in sex education if we begin from the assumptions that learning is conflicted, that sexuality resists being educated even as it inspires curiosity, and that the subject of sex education is herself divided and liable to act in her own worst interest? Drawing on theories of thinking in psychoanalysis, I consider this question through the status of prohibition in sex education and argue that prohibitions can function either as a way of shutting thinking down or as a tentative step towards thinking an intolerable thought. The documentary film Desire illustrates the potentially productive use of prohibitions and suggests some of the conditions necessary for developing the capacity for thoughtfulness in sex education.     

Paradoxical tensions in creating a teaching and learning space within a graduate education course on spirituality

Much has been written recently about inclusive learning environments in higher education. Most of this writing has unproblematically assumed a simple link between inclusion and access to institutions. In this paper I suggest that inclusive learning environments need to be reconceptualised as contexts within which a 'democratisation of knowledge' occurs. I draw upon my experience as a tutor on a professional development course for university lecturers to explore this reconceptualisation, looking in particular at issues to do with experiential knowledge, gender and sexuality.     

A (TRANS)formative approach to gender-inclusive science education

The teaching of science in K-12 schools has long been criticized as a process that propagates oppression for students who do not conform to entrenched norms of gender, sex, and sexuality. Academic standards, curriculum, and textbooks are rife with rhetoric that reinforces any deviation from cisheterosexuality as aberrant, unusual, or abnormal. However, these often-over-simplified conceptions discount the historic social and scientific intricacies of gender and sexual diversity as well as students' own lived experiences. While there have been advancements in LGBTQ+ and gender-inclusive science education reform, these movements have been stymied by a lack of cohesive guidelines for pedagogy and practice, particularly for trans, nonbinary, and gender-creative youth. Situated within trans-created conceptual frameworks for critical education, this study explored the pedagogical practices of 10 transgender science teachers with the purpose of learning from their experiences creating gender inclusive curriculum. From the data (in-depth interviews, instructional materials samples, and reflective teaching statements) emerged the TRANS (Trans and Research-informed Approaches for Nonbinary and gender-inclusive Science education) Framework for gender inclusive science education pedagogy. This framework is anchored in three domains for teaching science through a trans-informed lens:interrogating and accessing power, resisting essentialism, and embracing experiential knowledge and personal epistemologies. The findings of this study contribute to our growing understanding of gender-inclusive science learning environments. Importantly, this study amplified the experiential knowledge of teachers whose voices are critically absent from research surrounding gender and LGBTQ+-inclusive science education practice. Moreover, the framework derived from teachers' experiences can be used to guide educators in making their science classrooms safer and more gender inclusive.     

Examining Sexuality Education Preferences Among Youth at Risk for Poor Sexual Health Outcomes Based on Social Determinants of Health Factors

ABSTRACT

At-risk adolescents may experience Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) that lead to higher rates of risky sexual behavior, including increased risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. These SDoH may include components such as unstable family structures, incomplete education, and poverty. Targeting at-risk youth for sexuality education is one way to work toward decreasing sexual health disparities. However, preferences for sexuality education approaches may differ among at-risk youth by additional factors including sex and sexual orientation. The purpose of this study was to describe sexuality education preferences among at-risk youth and how sexuality education preferences differ based on sex and sexual orientation in an at-risk sample of high school-aged youth in Texas. Results indicate sexuality education preferences differ based on sex and sexual orientation when examined by sexual health topics and methods of delivery. Implications of this study indicate including at-risk youth in sexual health programs may be a way to target those at-risk of adverse SDoH, but these groups also have specific preferences for sexuality education.     

Caring for the Pastoral Carers

Kevin McCarthy sees a slight irony in the idea of inspecting the spiritual dimension of education. Nevertheless, he argues strongly that schools' response to this should be creative. The resulting policy must be a whole-school one that involves both horizontal and vertical curriculum development. In the second part of his paper he describes how, in his own school, a programme is being developed which goes beyond the mechanistic approach to science typically found in examination syllabi. Starting from the students' own perceptions, this programme considers the big issue which underlies science: that of ‘the spiritual dimension’.     

Recent developments in HIV/AIDS prevention for Russian adolescents

This article reports on the educator qualities that are valued by Australian teachers involved in sexuality education in high schools. Focus groups were conducted with school sexuality education teachers in 19 high schools in five Australian states. Data indicated that teachers valued being trustworthy, being open and honest, being willing to listen, having a sense of humour, and being able to relate to the students, especially being able to relate in a trustworthy and confidential way. Also valued were being comfortable with one's own sexuality, being approachable and being flexible. These qualities are similar to those recommended in the literature in the 1970s and 1980s and correspond closely to the qualities sought by today's high school students. Australian schoolteachers currently enjoy a positive climate for teaching sexuality education, as do many European schoolteachers. This contrasts with the climate for many American teachers where Abstinence Until Marriage programme requirements place many restrictions on what can be taught and may compromise the expression of teacher qualities such as being non-judgemental, flexible, open and honest. The findings have implications for teacher professional development, pre-service teacher education training, and the selection of teachers to teach sexuality education.     

Sexing the Subject: Teachers,pedagogies and sex education

This article analyses the relationship between sexual biography and pedagogic practice. It is based on life history interviews with sex education practitioners (teachers and a school nurse) that aimed to explore elements of these individuals' sexual biographies, their experiences of learning about sex and their pedagogic practice. The article considers why the sexuality of sex educators may be important, how this manifests itself in school and, finally, some of the implications for policy and practice.     

Primary School Sex Education Programs: Views and experiences of teachers in four primary schools in Sydney,Australia

This small-scale study draws on qualitative data from four government primary schools in Sydney, Australia to investigate the sex education given to grade five and six primary school children by their teachers. This article explores the sexuality issues teachers find difficult to discuss, and reports the concerns teachers have when teaching sexuality education. The practices teachers adopt to encourage parent-teacher partnerships in sex education are also reported. School programs varied in the coverage that was given to contraception and sexually transmitted infections while no school program formally addressed sexual identity and orientation, issues that were brought up by the children through their questions. Teacher concerns included what parents might think about the program and how to manage the different levels of maturity, knowledge and comfort among the children in their class. The article concludes that teachers need to continue fostering their partnership with parents and that many teachers require more opportunities for training so that they can address with comfort the sexuality issues of concern to children and their parents.