Search

This paper concerns The Little Red Schoolbook, an English translation of the Danish book Den lille røde bog fur skoleelever. After the book's publication in the UK, opponents were successful in pressing for its publisher's prosecution. The ensuing trial led to its withdrawal and its bowdlerisation. It is argued that the work played some part in changing social and sexual mores and sex education practice in the UK, being, in effect, the Urtext of the ‘harm reduction approach’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Politically expedient approaches to difficult knowledge about sexual violence have included educational practices that create conditions for 'safe' spaces, such as announcing content in advance, trigger warnings and other pedagogical practices that make care allowable and smooth out the sharp edges of violence that can knowingly invoke trauma. This paper is about the power of curricular materials charged with violence in educational practices that cannot guarantee safety. I draw from feminist new materialisms to analyse the thing-ness of clothing in an art installation that was curated as a sexual violence prevention curriculum at my university. I consider the clothing as mattering as the substance of affect and thought. The starting point is that pedagogies of affectively charged encounters in education produce relations of danger and repair with important implications for victims' and survivors' knowledge, memory and trauma. The goal is to question the hope for pedagogical guarantees concerning difficult knowledge and understand what more precarity might mean for pedagogical responsibility in sexual assault curricula. The paper concludes by considering the curricular possibilities of difficult affective knowledge for a kind of queer healing and collective attention to sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research reveals a significant gap between young people’s lived experience with digital technologies and the scripted content of online safeguarding programmes that focus on young people’s rational, individual decision-making regarding safe and responsible use. Rarely do online safeguarding programmes engage with the wider gender and sexual norms shaping young people’s digital cultures. This paper outlines how experimenting with speculative fiction offers generative possibilities for digital sexualities research and education. Drawing on group interviews and arts-based data produced by five girls aged 11–12 years old, it explores the competing and contradictory demands of contemporary digitally-networked girlhood. The paper briefly outlines how girls are promoted as empowered, choice-making agents in contemporary digital culture before examining the difficulties girls encounter when expressing their frustration at enduring gender and sexual inequities at school and online. It moves to explore how experimenting with speculative fiction through arts-based methods allowed new forms of voicing to emerge which challenged the vision of girls as vanguards of a new socio-economic order. By engaging in a diffractive analysis of the cut-up poem ‘Test Subject 15066’ and the fabricated future girl figure produced by three girls in the study, this paper explores alternative figurations of future girlhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on South African teenage girls' engagement with pornography. Using a decolonial approach and drawing upon new feminist materialism, this study focuses on the ways in which bodies, gender and sexuality configure to produce and constrain girls' capacities for sexual expression. The paper makes three claims. First, the article turns away from a one-sided representation of girls as only possible to know through the lens of sexual suffering while challenging childhood sexual innocence. Second, the online pornographic field is situated in a gendered and racialised system of organisation whereby the perfect body is naturalised as an esteemed object of desire. Third, the desire for the perfect, slim, blemish-free, hairless body through self-surveillance constricts capacities in line with normative standards of female beauty. A decolonial porn assemblage is harnessed to illustrate the contradictions produced as girls both desire and object to idealised bodies that are naturalised through heterosexual and racialised hierarchies. The paper concludes by considering the implications of approaching girls' engagement with pornography in relation to the expansion and limitation of their capacities and the body as an intense site of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adult-centric concept of 'age-appropriateness' is an arbitrary signifier and yet it commands a powerful common-sense appeal in governing the shape of sexuality education. The visibility of LGBTQ+ lives in primary schools is deeply impacted by the cis-heteronormative ways in which age-appropriateness is commonly understood and mobilised; very often resulting in silence and delay. The concept of age-appropriateness also becomes entangled with moral panics about 'promoting' LGBTQ+ lives, or children being somehow 'recruited' to identify as LGBTQ+. This paper draws on findings from a study with the parents of eleven trans and gender diverse children (then aged between 5 and 13) conducted in 2017, as well as a follow-up study conducted with seven participants from the same group of parents and children in 2022. The paper explores how the politics of age and agency intersect and become intensified as trans and gender diverse children and their parents navigate and make decisions about their bodies, lives and everyday worlds in primary schools. These stories of trans and gender diverse children provide an arresting invitation to adults to attend closely to the rich stories of children themselves in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education across contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in Hong Kong's considerably limited discourse on sexuality, this paper aims to examine how introducing the topic of masturbation into our college's gender-and sexuality-related course created pedagogical conundrums (in the words of Kathleen Quinlivan). We discuss how attempts to confront these conundrums enabled us to begin the journey of understanding and breakthe silence about having sexual desire discussed in the classroom and written assignments. Drawing on our earlier classroom discussion of sexual topics, which resulted in moments of silence, and the written assignments of 10 students on the topic of masturbation, this paper borrows Quinlivan's discussion of the possibilities in 'uncomfortable analytic reflexivity' to explore how education can be a highly contested space carved out by students to express, both 'silently' and 'openly', their perceptions of masturbation. Classrooms can be flipped to discover the cracks that allow the journey towards breaking the silence to begin and to provide space for students to discuss sexual desires and pleasures that were previously deemed negative and unspeakable in their previous classroom experience. Remembering and reflecting on such silence can allow it to be reconceptualised as illuminating and meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awareness of culturally diverse young people's rights and needs to sexuality education has been raised internationally. However, existing literature has generally focused more on how culturally diverse young people navigate western mainstream societies, leaving the Asian context underexamined. This paper explores the experiences and views of South Asian minority youth of sexuality education at home and in school in Hong Kong, informed by rights-based and cultural competence perspectives of sexuality education, and using a qualitative descriptive methodology. The findings identified four themes: (1) the double silence experienced at home and school; (2) marriage within the same religion and caste; (3) gender role expectations to be caring women and protective men, and (4) the need for culturally targeted sexuality education. This paper contributes to scholarship on sexuality education by advancing the knowledge base by means of a case study conducted in Hong Kong, an Asian multicultural context that differs from western multicultural societies. It elucidates the meaning of cultural sensitivity and cultural competence by stressing the negotiability of cultural norms and taboos and identifying the practical implications for conducting sexuality education in a multicultural city like Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing sexting in sexual health education classrooms is one way of supporting young people to become good sexual citizens and to emphasise respect and consent in their sexual practices and in their lives. While a fair amount of research has worked with youth to understand their motivations for sexting, less research has been conducted with in-service teachers to understand their perspectives, pedagogical approaches, and beliefs regarding young people and sexting. Set in this context, this paper discusses findings from interviews with Canadian teachers who were teaching a new Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum that included discussions of sexting. Our findings suggest that many teachers are still engaging discourses of risk, shame and blame when they talk to their students about sexting. Likewise, longstanding gender norms and stereotypical sexual scripts are evident in the ways in which many teachers both understand and teach sexting. Some teachers, however, are engaging in more promising pedagogical practices that frame sexting as having a range of uses, outcomes, and purposes, painting a more holistic picture of young people's sexting landscapes. Findings from this paper may be useful for educators and policymakers creating sexting curriculum for young people in educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in New Zealand secondary schools. After conducting a nationwide survey of teachers and producing a report on the challenges reported by RSE teachers, we began to develop a paper exploring the perennial issues faced by RSE teachers as they enact curriculum policy. Given that these issues endure, we considered how else we could approach the paper: in particular, what different questions could we ask of our data; and what alternative analytics offer potential for thinking in new ways about the perennial issues, and move us beyond telling the same old story? Asking these questions led us to Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (approach to policy analysis. Using data from our survey to focus our attention on key issues for teachers, we work with extracts from national government guidance for schools and teachers on RSE to apply this approach. Under five headings developed through the data analysis, we present five ‘provocations’ – or deliberately provocative proposals for the future of RSE in New Zealand. We hope the ideas in this paper may spark different ways of thinking about RSE policy and practice, with the ultimate aim of delivering meaningful and responsive RSE in secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates societal reactions to integrating LGBTQ+ content into the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum in England and Wales. Utilising Stanley Cohen’s theory of moral panics, it examines the roles of media, moral entrepreneurs, authorities, and the public in shaping debates around educational reforms. The paper highlights the complexities of balancing traditional values and inclusivity in education, emphasising the necessity of a considerate and comprehensive RSE approach. The study employs mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses, to explore the multifaceted nature of this societal issue and its wider implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the retrospective accounts of eight LGBT+ students aged 18–21 attending a university in Northern England. Using interpretivist methodology, qualitative research was conducted to explore how their sex and relationships education impacted upon their needs as a sexual and/or gender minority. An under-researched aspect of experience was also investigated: namely, how LGBT+ people learned about sex and relationships if not in a formal school setting. Two focus groups were used to examine these areas of interest and similar patterns in both groups were apparent. Themes such as the impact of heteronormative value systems, pornography as an educational resource, and the use of online Blogs and search engines as a source of alternative education were highlighted. Findings demonstrate how participants' experiences of sex and relationships education were largely non-inclusive and irrelevant to their needs. The paper concludes with practical suggestions to ensure subsequent generations of LGBT+ pupils receive a more inclusive educational experience, supported by approachable teachers who are comfortable and competent teaching the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my embodied identity as a teacher and how students' homophobic attacks attempted to disempower this identity. I explore how colleagues' responses to these incidents advocated for a disembodied understanding of practice which positioned my sexuality as the issue and attempted to straighten me as a teacher. As a result, this paper argues that being an effective ally to queer beginning teachers starts with respecting and valuing our embodied subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares a rhizomatic unfolding of how a creative, post-qualitative praxis for becoming adventurous in the field of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) can unfold in a conducive policy and practice context (Wales, UK). Specifically, we focus on the making and mattering of what we call 'Crush-Cards'. These are a suite of illustrated data calling-cards designed to re-animate research findings and stay close to the ways in which children and young people are entangled in, and navigate their way through, complex human and more-than-human gender and sexuality assemblages. Each section progressively provides a glimpse at how our art-ful rhizomatic praxis has evolved and how the resource and emergent CRUSHing pedagogy is becoming resourceful in unexpected ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with two overarching questions: why is engaging with queer theologies potentially valuable for sex education, and how can we carry out this kind of work without rendering sex education an expression of queer theological commitment? In responding to the first of these questions, I argue that working with queer theologies can offer sex education researchers another way of thinking about, and with, theology – one that resists positioning theology as inevitably heteronormative through its attention to the body, embraces the multiple possibilities of queer subjecthood, and attends to the importance of context in understanding how heteronormativity is both reproduced and resisted. Following this, I turn to the second question animating this paper, suggesting that if we are to avoid sex education sliding into an inevitable expression of queer theological commitment, what is needed is a methodology for the translation for sex education research, in which queer theologies can 'meet' with sex education without at the same time 'merging' with it. I demonstrate how this might be enacted through the symbol of the 'Abrahamic threesome', a queer symbolic device of my own design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a literature review on relationships and sexuality education for primary (elementary) school programme effectiveness. Using a theory-generating approach informed by realist evaluation, the review takes a deep dive into the literature to identify contexts, mechanisms and outcomes likely to influence the effectiveness of programmes. This paper will be of interest to researchers, evaluators, RSE programme designers and practitioners as findings provide a catalogue of factors (variables) that can be considered for application in future programme evaluations and for inclusion in programme logic models. It identifies areas of opportunity to incorporate children's voices into research and points to the need for longitudinal studies to address the context- and time-sensitive nature of relationships and sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality and relationship education (SRE) for trans young people is fraught with ongoing institutional and informational erasure, even as trans young people display considerable agency in navigating their SRE needs. This paper reports on a survey of 112 Australian trans young people, who shared their experiences of SRE (in terms of delivery and content), and their views on three story completion tasks where they were asked to respond to prompts about three fictional stories focused on trans young people (and for some their cisgender partners) and intimacy. Participants reported that SRE was delivered in class and focused on puberty and anatomy, although many participants accessed SRE information informally. Participants overwhelmingly reported the erasure of trans-specific SRE content and suggested that SRE content should include a trans focus. Responses to the story completion task emphasised the agency of the fictional trans young people in asserting their boundaries, deserving respect, being knowledgeable about their bodies and ensuring their safety. Fictional cisgender young people in the story completion tasks were expected to be respectful, and to be guided by trans people (but also to educate themselves). The paper concludes with recommendations for harnessing trans young people's agency in the context of SRE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex education rarely covers disability. This paper uses autoethnography to reflect on how being epileptic impacted the author's understanding of sex and sexuality. The paper grapples with disability narratives and internalised ableism surrounding sex. The paper seeks to engage with conceptions of who sex education is for, and how disabled people are treated when it comes to sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the gap in the literature concerning factors inhibiting the provision of continuing professional development (CPD) for relationships and sex education in English schools. Using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, it examines resistance to relationships and sex education CPD at a personal and institutional level in a south coast English school. Findings suggest that commonly used CPD approaches based on a deficit model and pedagogies of exposure are ineffective in bringing about change in strongly cisheteronormative secondary school settings. Using data from focus groups, a case study is used to explore this phenomenon and alternatives to conventional CPD approaches. Findings reveal that resistance to relationships and sex education CPD manifests in personal resistance (teacher’s habitus conflicting with CPD) and professional resistance (misalignment of training’s capital value with teacher’s accrued capital). Both forms of resistance negatively impact CPD effectiveness. A Culture of Conversation approach is proposed to create reflexive spaces that disrupt cisheteronormative institutional doxa and challenge individual resistance. While limited to a single field site, the research points to potential in developing a culture of conversation as appropriate, ethical and more effective relationships and sex education CPD strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal school-based sexuality education rarely engages with the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, inter, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+) youth. This paper therefore focuses on sexuality education as reflected in peer-led LGBTIQA+ activist discourses from Switzerland. Discourse analysis was conducted on the ‘problematisation’ of anal sex between 2012 and 2023 in the question-and-answer section of the LGBTIQA+ youth magazine Milchbüechli. The analytical focus was informed by Foucault’s work, taking ‘techniques of the self’ as a point of departure. It aimed to uncover how people come to recognise themselves as subjects of desire in LGBTIQA+ discourses. The results show that peer-led LGBTIQA+ discourses overcome some of the limitations of more formal kinds of sexuality education, for example, through their focus on pleasure or the deconstruction of phallocentric thinking. However, the discourses also fail to consider the sexual body as relational and therefore fail to articulate sexual ethics that are grounded beyond notions of personal autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the contemporary backlash to LGBTIQ+ rights and its focus on queer and transgender children and teachers in schools, by returning to campaigns to exclude gay and lesbian teachers in the 1970s. It brings renewed historical context to debates surrounding teacher employment and teachers’ moral status as harbingers of the future nation state. We focus on one Australian case, when in 1976 the Queensland government refused to employ a gay teacher, Greg Weir. Drawing on archival sources including campaign newsletters, activist material, and oral histories, we show how this was a formative moment in broader teacher employment relations and the contest between queer denial and queer possibility in schooling, contoured by two enduring disputes over: the first, the control and protection of children; and the second, the moral character of teachers and their role in shaping the future of a settler nation through schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While legislation has been introduced in recent years to protect the rights of LGBT+ teachers in Ireland, teachers’ perspectives on the current reality are mixed and challenges still exist. Some teachers are comfortable stating their sexuality in schools, while others are not. This paper focuses on the views of seven primary school teachers, who discussed their experiences as LGBT+ employees in Irish schools during semi-structured interviews. The findings point to the importance of effective leadership as a means to make schools truly inclusive for all. The teachers also reported the wider school context being important including colleagues’ attitudes towards inclusion and, in particular, LGBT+ issues. The need for school-wide professional learning was seen as central to becoming a truly inclusive school, whereby teachers are equipped with the skills and knowledge to combat discrimination in all its forms. Finally, the study highlights the issue of LGBT+ teacher well-being and how this can be affected by the level of support shown to teachers in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subsequent to the introduction of compulsory relationships and health education in primary schools and relationships and sex education and health education (RSHE) in secondary schools in England from 2020, this paper examines the attitudes of parents towards school- and home-based RSHE. Using data from a survey of parents (n = 849) of children at 37 independent schools in England and Wales, we analysed parental attitudes towards school-parent communication about RSHE, the teaching of RSHE in school, and their own communication with their children about relationships and sex at home, exploring perceived barriers and use of resources. We found significant parental support for school-based RSHE, alongside some concerns, as well as uncertainty and embarrassment as barriers to parent-child communication about relationships and sex at home, indicating the need for schools to strengthen school-parent partnership in this area, and to encourage parents to talk to their children at home in tandem with what is being taught in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a practice-based research study in Swedish secondary schools, the aim of this paper is to explore how facts and values are made and unmade as separate and entangled phenomena in sexuality education. In this exploration, we work with a posthumanist approach – agential realism – and more specifically the concept of agential cuts. The empirical material draws from two moments in the teaching of sexuality education, one concerning nakedness and one concerning gender diversity. The analysis puts forward how the lesson topics in relation to school subjects and exercises become significant actors in how facts and values are enacted in the teaching. This implies that facts and values are enacted together-apart within a relational set of interdependency and hence are always present although temporarily more forcefully and ephemeral. To conclude, we discuss the complexities of how facts and values are part of enacting the everchanging knowledge area of sexuality education and urge for acknowledgement of this matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the recent proliferation of anti-discrimination protections supporting LGBTIQ+ youth internationally, backlash periods have ensued. Whilst liberal-progressive rights models theorise 'backlash' as an expected consequence of rights recognitions progress, some post-colonial and Queer scholars frame backlash within enduring authoritarian anti-rights tendencies, and question assumptions of progress. To understand backlash more adequately, this paper explores state-level anti-LGBTIQ+ Bills potentially impacting youth proposed in the USA between 2018 and 2022. Critical discourse analysis is used to map the different types, locations, conceptual arrangements and outcomes of 543 anti-LGBTIQ+ rights US state-level proposed Bills. Bill attempts were mainly concentrated in Republican-governed states including Tennessee (48), Missouri (40), Iowa (39), Oklahoma (32) and Texas (32). Overly extended claims concerning girls/women's religious and parental rights were advanced in opposition to LGBTIQ+ youth rights, and as part of wider rights attacks. Bills used anti-rights and pro-rights discourses to mask as 'backlash' the rights claims advanced by elite-led anti-rights mobilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address teenage learners' risk of HIV, STIs and pregnancy, good quality school-based sexuality education is of great importance. In this paper we address Zimbabwean young people's construction of sex and sexuality education. We draw from semi-structured individual interviews conducted with forty-seven teenage boys and girls aged between 15 and 19 years in two rural schools in Zimbabwe. The study's findings suggest that teenagers make sense of sex and sexuality education within dominant discursive frameworks that stress the importance of sexual innocence and abstinence, with the sexuality of teenage girls receiving special surveillance. However, the learners in our study also occupied positions which suggested young people's sexual agency beyond innocence. In the light of these contradictions, teenagers in Zimbabwe are caught up in producing both sexual innocence and sexual agency, making abstinence only education irrelevant to their day to day lives. Implications for future forms of sexuality education and teenagers' sexual agency in rural Zimbabwean schooling are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out-of-school comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programmes are viewed by UNFPA as important in empowering youth. These programmes may, however, be critiqued for, firstly, inadvertently equating empowerment with individual agency to the exclusion of social justice; and, secondly, using the word empowerment as a self-evident signifier. We propose that empowerment be conceptualised within a critical sexual and reproductive citizenship (CSRC) framework that draws on feminist and queer re-workings of the principles of citizenship. To operationalise this conceptualisation, we developed the Masizixhobise toolkit from the five key issues outlined in the CSRC framework. The aim of the toolkit is to aid in the design and refinement of theoretically embedded empowerment CSE programmes. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of the toolkit. To do so, we analyse the Partners in Sexual Health’s (PSH) Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights facilitator’s manual. A template analysis was conducted on this manual using a priori of themes from the toolkit. We sift through the PSH manual’s alignments or misalignments with the CSRC framework and make recommendations for enhancing the empowerment components of the manual. This example may assist others in designing and refining theoretically embedded and socially just youth empowerment CSE programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses findings from interviews conducted in England with 15 self-identified feminist mothers about sex and relationships education in the home. Participants’ understandings and enactments of being sexuality educators for their children involved what they described as open and honest ‘sex positive’ communication with their children, based on their subjective views about gender and sexual rights, safety and wellbeing. Participants were concerned about protecting their children from oftentimes gendered risks of judgement shame and abuse. Feminist sex and relationships education in the home for these mothers was shaped, and sometimes constrained, by the gendered sociocultural conditions of their children’s lives. Implications are discussed regarding the need for self-reflexivity amongst feminist mothers, supported by collaborative local and community educational initiatives to identify and collectively tackle the social contexts in which risks and harms arise for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homophobia is an enduring issue within schooling contexts internationally. This paper attempts to rethink homophobia from the perspective of heterosexual students' accounts of bearing witness to it. Within the existing literature it has been LGBTQ students who have held the responsibility for naming and recounting homophobia. This paper re-orients this conventional account by positioning heterosexual students as its narrators to see what this might reveal about homophobia's operation at school. While this strategy does not disrupt the 'othering' and 'victimization' of LGBT youth in these stories, it has other effects. When heterosexual students name homophobia as unjust, it is possible to see the instability of the victim/perpetrator binary that typically structures these accounts. Narratives of participants in this study did not fit neatly into this binary, revealing its inability to capture the complexity of homophobia's operation. To have any hope of effectively addressing homophobia at school, we need to move beyond the victim/perpetrator binary. This is because it masks some of homophobia's more nuanced moves, such as targeting difference, rather than sexual identity exclusively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an extensive literature review of current approaches to sexual consent and demonstrates their insufficiency for teaching higher education students about healthy sex. Their overemphasis on the giving of consent to the detriment of attention to the process of gaining consent, as well as their inappropriate utilisation of incomplete legal frames, make them inadequate for preventing rape in a world shaped by gendered social norms. Additionally, these inadequacies make current approaches even less appropriate for the more aim of teaching the broader and vital topic of healthy sex. The goal of this paper is to challenge the way sexual consent education is currently framed in the USA, recommend a paradigm shift regarding perspectives on sexual consent education, and provide suggestions for formative research concerning the provision of university-level, interdisciplinary healthy sex education courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly prevalent on university and college campuses globally. The taboos associated with sex, gender inequity, and living in a patriarchal world where misogyny is glorified and criminalised are key socio-cultural determinants driving these forms of violence. Less is known about the ways in which sexual slang or terminology impact how students experience and talk about these events. This paper reports on findings from a participatory action study that explored sexual slang use among female and male undergraduate students (n = 23) with the aim of creating more responsive sexual and gender-based violence policies and practices. The terms identified (n = 59) provide a window into the daily lives of these young people, who display remarkable socio-linguistic adaptation and creativity. They also demonstrate how cultural appropriation, the exclusion of queer students, toxic masculinitycontribute to ongoing incidents of sexual and gender-based violence on campus. These findings contribute new insights into sexual terminology among post-secondary students, particularly in the Canadian context where few studies of this nature exist. They also acknowledge the critical role universities can play in making meaningful structural change to prevent traumatic events from occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior publications on sexuality education experiences have often focused on cisgender students. Few have studied transgender students' experiences, particularly in East Asia, and none have addressed these issues in the Hong Kong Chinese context, where transgender human rights are a hotly debated issue, and injustice towards trans youth persists. Using the concepts of transprejudice and rights-based sexuality education, this paper identifies the non-inclusive and inclusive sexuality education experiences of Chinese transgender students as reported in data from qualitative interviews with eight trans students aged 16–20 years from secondary schools and a community college. We identified the following themes: 1) Left Out – being omitted and silenced; 2) Terrified and Distressed – being misgendered and misinformed; 3) Outraged – being pathologised and bullied; 4) Empowered: connecting trans-Inclusive and rights-based education; 5) Affirmed and Supported – engaging in trans-inclusive dialogue. The paper argues that rights-based gender diversity content needs to be included in the sexuality education curriculum to reduce transgender students' feelings of marginalisation. It also speaks to the need for advocacy for non-prejudiced and inclusive sexuality education in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghanaian adolescents face considerable sexual and reproductive health challenges that can disrupt human capital formation. However, a positive and healthy transition from adolescence to adulthood can be achieved by increasing access to sexual and reproductive health information, education, and services. This paper documents emerging findings from an adolescent girls' programme delivered in 56 districts of Ghana. Data were collected from girls and young women aged 10–24 years who participated in the programme as part of a larger study that included in-school and out-of-school participants. In-depth interviews (IDI) [N = 49] and focus-group discussions (FGDs) [N = 13] were conducted in November 2021 and November 2022. An abductive approach was used to develop key themes from the data. The analysis revealed that the programme showed promise in changing the attitudes of beneficiaries towards safe sexual practices through condom use, in increasing assertiveness towards sexual and gender-based violence, and in real-life application of the knowledge and skills gained for health and social wellbeing. Out-of-school sexuality education programmes such as the one described here can be important catalysts for developing and maintaining meaningful relationships with others through the provision of information and education, and service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Book censorship efforts in the USA have become increasingly concerning for champions of freedom of expression and civil liberties. The movement to ban books is seemingly driven by a desire to curtail adolescents' access to information about sexuality and gender diversity. This paper details the findings of a content analysis of the American Library Association's (ALA) Top 10 Most Challenged Books list from 2011 to 2021. The authors analysed purported reasons for book challenges along with target age groups for the 42 books within our sample period. We found that most of the books in the ALA Top 10 list were challenged for reasons related to sexuality and/or LGBTQ themes. Between 2011 and 2015, book challengers were most likely to claim to be motivated by general perceptions of 'sexual explicitness'. However, after 2016, and perhaps as a backlash against the Federal Government's legalisation of same-sex marriage, purported LGBTQ content in books was a stronger motivator. Given that most of the books in the top 10 most challenged list are intended for adolescent readers, our findings have implications for informal sex education and access to information about LGBTQ lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools in the UK and Europe, North America and Australia are introducing ambitious forms of relationships and sex education (RSE) or school-based sexuality education. For RSE to be effective it must be inclusive, recognising and respecting the needs and experiences of those who have not always been well served by sex/sexuality education. This paper considers one such group – students with faith backgrounds – and explores ways of delivering RSE in the 'postsecular classroom' in which religion is recognised and respected. We conducted consultative research – designed primarily to inform the development of teaching resources – among students and parents of faith, and RSE teachers. Focussing upon two religiously diverse cities in England, this research included systematic literature review, classroom observations and group discussions with students, and questionnaire surveys and interviews with parents and teaching staff. Informed by the findings of this research, we designed, piloted and now share evidence-based teaching resources. This illustrates one way in which RSE can be adapted for use in the postsecular classroom where faith is out in the open, but not necessarily explicitly engaged with in the lesson. Considering the perspectives of faith communities in this way can improve RSE for everyone in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the various conference papers discussed during the "Sex Education Conference" held at the University of London in England and featured in the November 2006 issue of the journal "Sex Education." The papers highlight several issues from different authors about gender, the use of media as a tool for reflection among young people in having sex and relationships, and popular films as teaching aids. She mentions that the papers provide improvement for sex education.

This paper looks at how shame functions in the teaching of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the classrooms for 13–19 year-olds in secondary schools in Bangladesh. Using the theoretical framework of affect, the paper looks at shame and other experiences of discomfort and hesitation among teachers while teaching these topics to young people. Drawing insights from 25 in-depth interviews with teachers in secondary schools in urban, semi-urban and rural settings, the paper explores how teachers deemed teaching certain topics as 'excessive', unnecessary and inappropriate in school settings. Teachers experience reluctance and discomfort in discussing culturally sensitive sexual and reproductive health and rights topics, and a persistent fear of being ridiculed and excluded from their community. By exploring how affect can be understood to initiate critical reflection about classroom norms, pedagogy and the role of teachers, the paper highlights the challenges for teachers who are seen as gatekeepers of sexual and reproductive health and rights knowledge, and brings forth a more nuanced reflection on the knowledge production process in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive sexuality education is increasingly being employed on a global scale, with controversies arising regarding the content of such education and the rights of children to access sexuality education versus parents' rights to decide the moral education of their children. In this paper, we utilise crip theory and a critical disability studies lens to analyse controversies surrounding parents' rights versus children's rights in the context of comprehensive sexuality education in Ontario, Canada. Using a disability studies perspective, this paper discusses the erasure of disabled children and youth in debates over children's and parents' rights while problematising the liberal humanist and legal frameworks often employed in comprehensive sexuality education and children's rights. As such, we theorise how a more relationally attuned version of both children's rights and comprehensive sexuality education can avoid oppositional politics and the reification of liberal humanist and ableist ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to the issue of the journal that discusses topics such as pleasure in sex education, sexual health, and teacher education.

In many contexts, there has been a rapid increase in the visibility of trans* lives in the public sphere. Much educational research has focused on how to make life better for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper moves sideways from this concern to explore how public discourses around trans* lives and the individual labour of bodies are changing the shape of gender in schools and society. Ireland offers an insightful site for this inquiry because, following the Gender Recognition Act (2015) and the Marriage Equality Act (2015), trans* lives have become more visible in the public sphere and there has been a heightened concern for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper draws on an analysis of how trans* people are represented in the media as well as in a selection of accounts from the primary school community of a trans* child. Framed by debates about gender intelligibility, normativity and transgression, the paper elucidates how, as trans* visibility increases, the disciplinary terms of gender are reproduced with ambivalent effects. It argues against individualised and simplistic approaches to trans* identities in schools and raises questions about new gender possibilities in schooling contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and textbooks, this paper contributes to the growing field of research on the role of schools and schooling with regards to the construction of gender and sexuality by focusing on school practices and educational spaces. We argue that the nation-state in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a religious biopolitical state and its official discourse in the realm of gender and sexuality relies on heteronormative as well as gender normative belief systems. School spaces are therefore constituted as strongly heteronormative, and non-heterosexuality is not recognised as a legitimate subject position. Through its everyday practices, the education system upholds the state's ideology, by which the ideal/normal student is read as being heterosexual and cisgender, adhering to Islamic/state values, and constituted on the axis of strict gender binaries. Education about sexuality-gender diversity is therefore excluded and/or silenced. This paper aims to explore school discourses and practices in terms of gender and sexuality and how schools construct and regulate sexual and gender identities, with the aim of producing the ideal Islamic/Iranian subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a discourse analysis of 12 Swedish sexuality education texts intended for preschool practitioners and published between 1969 and 2021. Using Fairclough's framework, we identify three discourses about children's sexual play in relation to children's sexual agency in the texts: child sexuality as encouraged and entangled with adult sexuality; child sexuality as conditioned by what is perceived as normal or abnormal in children; and child sexuality as repressed. These three discourses mainly appear chronologically, but also overlap and connect with one another. When analysis begins from children's position and a theoretical understanding of children's and adults' agency as interdependent, it becomes possible to see how the child is construed as agentic, and how the adult role changes from encouraging sexual play to regulating and monitoring behaviour so that it does not occur. Over time, discourse on young children's sexual play has changed our understanding of both adults and children. Adults are increasingly construed as less knowledgeable in relation to young children's sexuality, and young children have become understood as more dangerous and in need of having their sexuality constrained and civilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed growing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity in Australia; yet, its inclusion in the school curriculum remains contentious. Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a commonly held belief that parents consider the inclusion of such topics inappropriate. In the light of this, this paper focuses on an analysis of three qualitative items from an Australian national survey of parents of children attending government-funded schools. Informed by the responses to these questions, we sought to better understand the concept of age-appropriateness present in the discourses deployed by a (minority) number of Australian parents who did not support gender and sexuality diversity-inclusivity in the curriculum. Thematic data analysis identified three key themes used by parents to warrant gender and sexuality diversity curriculum exclusion based on age inappropriateness: namely, inclusion is 'confusing'; children are too 'immature'; and children are too 'easily influenced'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illuminates how teachers are influenced by age, gender and sexuality in teaching about sex and relationships. In this analysis grounded in feminist theory, age, gender and sexuality are considered to be enacted as doings. Six interviews with teachers working with sexuality education in K-12 schools in Sweden were chosen from of a larger body of material consisting of 21 interviews with professionals engaged in school-based sexuality education. The six interviewees were selected because they explicitly addressed how teachers' age, gender and/or sexuality come to matter in the classroom. Findings show how male and female teachers organise their teaching in relation to normative expectations of age, gender and sexuality. In sexuality education, the diverse life-courses of (hetero)sexual women offer a wide range of pedagogic possibilities for female teachers to address issues of sexuality, consent and relationships whereas male teachers are constrained to doing safe(r) forms of masculinity by directing attention away from their bodies and experiences. In understanding these results, I argue that the figure of the tant has been key in forming the pedagogic backdrop to Swedish sexuality education, hence embedding a normative 'who' in the 'how' to teach sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of pleasure in school-based sexuality education remains a controversial issue despite a long-standing body of scholarship which argues for its importance. While recent studies reveal sexual pleasure remains missing in school programmes, it appears to be in abundance in the Netflix series Sex Education. This paper examines the series as a potential source of learning about sexual pleasure and the types of messages it offers young people on this topic. It argues that Sex Education’s treatment of sexual pleasure differs from school-based programmes in the way it often disrupts dominant meanings of sex and sexuality. While schools typically take a risk-reduction approach to young people’s sexuality, Sex Education treats sexual pleasure as a legitimate, positive and commonplace pursuit which can be experienced through diverse practices and relationships. Much of what Sex Education is able to achieve in its treatment of sexual pleasure is attributable to the series being outside formal schooling and its deployment of tools associated with the televisual medium. Given the rise of regressive gender and sexual politics globally, programmes like Sex Education offer an increasingly important source of learning and counter narratives to politically conservative understandings of sex and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How teachers respond to, and interact with, learners of diverse genders and sexualities is critical to ensuring their safe and inclusive schooling experiences. This paper examines the perspectives and responses towards learners of diverse genders and sexualities of a selected group of teachers in a primary school in South Africa. Twelve teachers were interviewed for this qualitative study, and the findings reveal that teachers had a limited understanding of diverse genders and sexualities and mostly held heteronormative and moralistic views. They also considered children as deficient and innocent and were awkward about acknowledging and responding to diverse genders and sexualities with primary school learners. To create a safe and supportive environment for children to understand and construct their genders and sexualities, teachers need to improve their understanding of gender and sexuality, critically reflect on their conservative socialisation and moral judgements, and address their discomfort concerning diverse genders and sexualities among children. Teacher education must prepare teachers in a manner that recognises the complex ways in which gender and sexuality infuse all aspects of learners’ lives. This education should prepare all teachers to adopt a non-judgemental approach to gender and sexuality inclusion in ways that challenge heteronormativity in the primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore how social work students can support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) young people in schools. Drawing on the reflective practice portfolio documents of four students who worked with LGBTQ+ young people in a school as part of a social workers in school (SWIS) student placement project, the article uses thematic analysis to identify how the students were able to support young people identifying as LGBTQ+. The article subscribes to a poststructuralist theoretical framework which sees gender and sexual identities as multiple, fragmented and constructed in relation to others and within the systems of knowledge and power that exist in schools. The article demonstrates the benefit to schools of having social work students on practice placement. The students' own reflections critically contemplate the way in which they were able to spend more prolonged periods of time with young people than the teachers could, both with individuals and LGBTQ+ groups. The students' reflective portfolios show the value of the school placements to their own development of knowledge and skills [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in Lady Agatha's Boarding School (Lady Agatha's) find teaching Sex and Relationships Education (RSE) uncomfortable. This paper investigates one aspect of the discomfort that they feel, namely the impact RSE has on their professional status as teachers. I use focus group data to reflect on the professional and personal location of teachers at Lady Agatha's and to explore their understanding of RSE through the recurring themes of professionalism and professional reputation as symbolic capital; deprofessionalisation and risk as symbolic violence; and the connects and disconnects between the doxa and illusio of the school. Findings suggest that by interrogating the sites of symbolic violence which generate RSE discomfort, we can start to unpick the fabric which creates discomfort about RSE, allowing both for a deeper understanding of RSE discomfort in teachers and an opportunity to address this discomfort as a barrier to RSE delivery at Lady Agatha's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises the ways in which non-binary gender is rendered invisible through binary Yes/No sexual consent education. Judith Butler's framework of gender intelligibility is drawn upon to consider the absenting of non-binary youth from consent education. We suggest that the undoing of the hegemonic colonial gender binary also be a project of consent education. Consent education is often taught through a highly gendered lens underscored by the 'miscommunication hypothesis,' which posits normative binary gender roles as the underlying cause of sexual violence and fails to account for how non-binary youth experience and navigate consent. Furthermore, we examine how binary Yes/No consent education negates non-binary gender by rejecting the grey area of consent. The dismissal of grey area experiences is problematic for non-binary youth as ambiguity around consent may be more prevalent amongst non-binary people due to increased experiences of trauma and the common experience of gender dysphoria. Despite this invisiblisation, non-binary people have formulated their own modes for navigating sexual pleasure and consent. We call for more research into how non-binary youth are invisibilised by binary consent education as well as how these youth are challenging normative consent and reimagining sexual cultures that centre interdependence, mutual pleasure, and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]