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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite public outcry, South Africa has decided to roll out comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Currently, however, there are no scripted lesson plans for teachers of learners with visual impairment. Local literature suggests that the current sexuality education curriculum fails to engage with sexuality diversity and is imbued with notions of compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness, perpetuating homophobia, transphobia and ableism in schools and broader communities. The paper sought guidance from disability professionals on how to best address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexualities' (LGBT+) issues as part of comprehensive sexuality education for learners with visual impairment. Bourdieu's work on doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy underpinned the study. Three professionals working with learners with visual impairment were interviewed in a focus group, and one school principal working in a school for learners with visual impairment was interviewed individually. Data were thematically analysed. Pre- and in-service teachers are encouraged not to see comprehensive sexuality education offered to learners with visual impairment as different from that provided to their sighted peers. Professionals urged teachers to accept LGBT+ learners with visual impairment in their dress, expression and embodiment. However, teachers need to be aware of learners' cultural and religious differences. Current lesson plans need to be revisited to safeguard against compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of sexuality education as an HIV prevention strategy, much attention has been given to what content should be taught and the effectiveness of that content in achieving desired goals. While some research has problematised how curricular content is understood or taken-up, what remains largely unquestioned is a pedagogical imaginary of knowledge as a fixed and stable object that can be transmitted from teacher to learner. This paper builds on feminist readings of pedagogy, and in particular the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth, to interrogate what might happen within sexuality education by thinking about knowledge as continually being made. Drawing on data from a year-long ethnographic research study conducted with loveLife, a national HIV prevention programme for young people in South Africa, the paper problematises the perceived boundaries of what is taught and explicitly engages the pedagogical approach as a constitutive part of what can/should/must be known as well as what kind of relation is offered to that knowledge. The question then is how sexuality education might be re-articulated to engage with ongoing and power-laden struggles within configurations of knowledge, and how a pedagogical approach might open those configurations to ways of knowing, and being known, that are more just for more people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various health promotion strategies have been implemented in South Africa aiming to encourage young people to talk about issues of sexuality and HIV with their parents/caregivers. Although parent/caregiver sexual communication may be an effective method of influencing sexual behaviour and curbing the incidence of HIV, very little is known about how young people with disabilities in South Africa communicate about these traditionally difficult subjects with their parents/caregivers. Based on findings from a participatory study conducted amongst 15–20-year-old Zulu-speaking youth with physical and visual disabilities, this paper explores how they perceive youth–parent/caregiver communication about sexuality and HIV. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, the paper outlines how disabled youth–parent/caregiver sexual communication is governed by cultural customs, sexual secrecy and constructs of innocence. It also argues that the experiences and perceptions of young people with disabilities are critical to the development of future interventions to assist parents/caregivers develop communication strategies that help disabled young people make sense of sexual behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within a gender justice framework, research on sexuality education in South African schools indicates that this is not the reality in practice. This paper draws on a growing body of qualitative studies, with both educators and learners in South African schools, to understand the issues undermining the goal of a critical and social justice pedagogy of sexuality in Life Orientation classrooms. We argue that sexuality education has been deployed to regulate and discipline young sexualities, reinforce and perpetuate gender binarisms and heteronormativity, re-establish global northern family values of the nuclear family within a pro-family discourse, and represent continued assumptions of adult authority in a civilising mission over young people. We suggest that the failure to make critical use of Life Orientation is linked to the dominance of 'expert'-based didactic pedagogy, and argue the possibilities of sexuality education as a productive space for young people's active participation and agency in making meaning of gender and sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing body of literature on sexuality education in South Africa, researchers have highlighted how teachers may face, or themselves be, barriers to the implementation of rights-based comprehensive sexuality education. Important issues with regard to educators are: firstly, the social and discursive space within which educators are located; and secondly, the complex emotional and psychic investments that educators take up within particular discourses and practices. This paper explores, through a psychosocial reading of an interview extract with a particular educator based in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, how discursive and psychic concerns are sutured within the complex subjectivity of the educator as the medium for sexual education in schools. Specifically, it highlights the numerous ways in which feminine sexuality and desire may be avoided, denied and silenced. Even when feminine desire is specifically evoked as in this case, it is done so in a way that ensures social and cultural respectability, thereby reproducing shame narratives that form and maintain traditional gender discourses. Our analysis demonstrates how engaging with educators as subjects with their own sexual history and psychic dynamics, and as individuals with raced, gendered and classed identities, is a potentially transformative perspective for effective sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 25 years, there has been growing investment in concepts of rights in the areas of HIV prevention, care and treatment, including HIV- and AIDS-related education delivered in schools. Despite this increasing commitment to the notion of rights, few efforts appear to have been made to understand the varying conceptions of rights that underpin different kinds of initiatives. Engaging with a multi-disciplinary body of literature on the issue of rights, and through a focus on three rights-informed HIV- and AIDS-related initiatives, this paper seeks to address this gap in the current literature. In so doing, it also examines a central tension within human rights discourse, namely between the construal of rights as shared and universally applicable to all human beings, while being created in and limited by the location in which they were elaborated, as well as by the language used to formulate them. More explicit engagement with the diversity of approaches made possible through a commitment to human rights may facilitate forms of HIV- and AIDS-related education that are more meaningful to young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details findings from an evaluation of a gendertransformative sexual and reproductive health and rights group education programme facilitated with young men aged 15-24 years in South Africa. A total of 475 young men participated in the group education programme. A self-administered pre- and postquestionnaire survey was conducted with a sample of the participants, and focus group discussions were facilitated. A total of 265 young men completed both the pre and post-questionnaires. Findings from the surveys as well as the focus group discussions showed positive changes in gender equitable attitudes, contraception and condom use. Results indicate that the young men who participated in the group education learned to identify harmful gender norms and actively questioned these constructs both within their personal lives and in the broader community. The intervention enabled some participants to envision alternative versions of masculinity and femininity, thus enabling them to adopt a new way of being, with transformed attitudes concerning household and gender roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality education forms part of the national school curricula of most sub-Saharan African countries, yet risk-related sexual behaviour among young people continues to fuel the HIV pandemic in this part of the world. One of the arguments put forward to explain why sexuality education seems to have had little impact on sexual risk-taking is that existing curricula have neglected to take into account the complexity of the social, cultural and gender norms that influence the behaviour of school-going young people in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past few years, the Department of Basic Education in South Africa has recognised the need to provide guidance to teachers on the content, pedagogical processes and messages that are relevant to their specific context. This paper critically reflects on findings from a literature-based study conducted to identify the cognitive and social factors influencing the behaviour of school-going young people in South Africa and the risk and protective factors that might be particular to their circumstances. The findings provide helpful guidelines about the development, content and implementation of sexuality education curricula more likely to be relevant in contexts of serious poverty and disadvantage. Although based on the South African literature, the findings may also offer useful lessons for curriculum designers in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles in the issue is presented that focus on how sex, sexualities, and education continue to be constructed in South Africa, including underground sexual cultures that involve online sexually explicit materials and pornography, Black African male teachers engaged in same-sex sexual relations, and barriers that prevent teaching for sexual diversity.

In this paper we explore the perceived desirable characteristics of South African Life Orientation teachers for teaching sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We also investigate the extent to which these characteristics can be understood as parts of a role script for teaching HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Data were collected from teachers who taught Grade Eight and Grade Nine students in South African public high schools. The teachers particularly emphasised the importance of personality and life experience as important characteristics for teaching sexuality and HIV/AIDS. In addition, they felt that it was challenging to create an open dialogue in the classroom and at the same time maintain classroom discipline. The teachers did not perceive that teaching about sexuality and HIV/AIDS was a role that a teacher could step in and out of. On the other hand, they were accustomed to playing different roles with respect to the students, such as parent, friend, counsellor and social worker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the interlocking concepts of power, knowledge and discourse, this article focuses on how counter normative sexualities are discursively constructed in the sexuality education classroom and with what effects. Drawing on in-depth interviews with teachers and classroom observation, the evidence highlights the presence of specific discourses about the teaching and learning of sexuality diversity. First, while many teachers argued for the inclusion of counter-normative sexualities, in their teaching and responses they privileged heterosexuality as legitimate and natural and same-sex sexualities as deviant and Other. Second, teachers' discourses construct queer youth not only as innocent and childlike but also as hypersexual and rebellious – requiring discipline and intervention. These constructions link closely to discourses of pity and tolerance, or blame when counter-normative sexualities were expressed. Finally, despite heterosexuality being privileged in the classroom, teachers' and pupils' questions about gender and sexuality diversity suggest the need for a more defined and inclusive curriculum sexuality education curriculum. Findings justify concern about how counter-normative sexualities are addressed in the sexuality education classroom and advocate for improvement in teaching and learning about counter-normative sexualities in South African secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good-quality sexuality education can be effective in reducing sexual health risks, but may also be disconnected from the lived realities of learners’ lives and reinforce gendered stereotypes. In line with the trend towards ‘empowerment’ in and through sexuality education, we implemented a pilot sexuality intervention with Grade 10 participants following a rigorous consultation process. Nine weekly group dialogues were held with 11 participants, with 2 follow-up sessions the next year. Freirian principles of critical consciousness and dialogical pedagogy, infused with discursive psychological understandings, were used to foreground gendered/sexual norms and to provide recognition for participants in a variety of gendered and sexual subject positions. Sessions were recorded, the facilitator kept a diary, and participants were asked to evaluate the intervention. The dialogical format of the group generated curiosity and engagement, and some participants took up a ‘responsible’ sexual subject position in a reflexive manner. A partial normalisation of some ‘hidden’ aspects of sex was enabled, and critical consciousness around some gendered inequities was promoted. We argue, first, that it is not so much sexualityeducationthat young people need, but sexualitydialogues, and second, that a discursive psychology framework provides a nuanced and fruitful dimension to Freirean inspired ‘empowerment’ sexuality interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the popularity of peer education as an HIV prevention strategy across a range of contexts, understanding of the experiences of those intimately placed within these programmes is limited. Instead, the majority of research in this field relies on hegemonic notions of rational human behaviour that operate under the assumption that knowledge leads to sexual behaviour change. This study explored the experience of peer educators and peer facilitators in an HIV prevention peer education programme in Cape Town, South Africa. The empirical analysis draws primarily on the perspectives of four peer educators and four peer facilitators, and was supported by interviews with three NGO management staff. The findings reveal how gendered expectations and identities deeply influence the lives and experiences of the peer educators and peer facilitators. However, the HIV prevention programme also reinforces gender stereotypes and notions of a rational sexual being, rather than creating channels for the emergence of new understandings of gender, power, and sexuality. We conclude with a brief description of future directions for HIV peer education prevention programming based on critical engagement with gender power dynamics and contextualised lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

People with disabilities are at increased risk of exposure to HIV, yet they lack access to HIV prevention, treatment care and support including sexuality education. Lack of knowledge, skills and confidence of educators teaching sexuality education to learners with disabilities is related to this increased vulnerability. This study identifies possible challenges educators of learners with disabilities face when teaching sexuality and HIV education. Five focus groups were conducted in three purposely selected types of special schools representing four impairment groups in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Educators recognise that teaching about sexuality is part of the South African Life Orientation curriculum and understand its importance to learners. However, they identified a number of challenges to such work, including barriers in communication and language, cultural values and expectations, learners' knowledge and behaviour, handling of sexual abuse cases and the teachers' own life experiences. Educators feel a lack of support from parents, departments of education, fellow educators and members of the community. They report the need for training and adapted HIV and sexuality education tools and resources to accommodate learners with disabilities. This training needs to provide knowledge on disability and HIV, offer guidance on disability-appropriate communication strategies, deal with sexual abuse and include educational tools for the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The stakes are high for sex education in South Africa: it has been estimated that 8.7% of young people live with HIV. Within primarily US and UK contexts, there has been much debate over the relative merits of abstinence-only and comprehensive sexual education programmes. These perspectives have largely been presented as irreconcilable, but in-depth interviews with 25 life orientation teachers across the Free State Province of South Africa reveal that teachers may attempt to reconcile aspects of the two into a hybridised perspective. They promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people while recognising the value of some of the broader issues of comprehensive sexuality such as relationships and safe sex. We attempt to make meaning of this hybridisation and present two arguments: that the specific South African context challenges the idea that these two contradictory positions cannot be mixed and that they might be strategically combined to promote a comprehensive sexuality education that builds a sense of agency and responsibility without alienating young people through moralism. We conclude with a brief description of future directions that classroom practice and teacher preparation might take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]