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Background: Comprehensive sex and sexuality education (CSE) is an evidence‐based intervention associated with improved sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Currently, there are no standardized requirements for sex and sexuality education in the United States, despite expert recommendations. Contributions to Theory: In the United States, a Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child theoretical model proposed by the Centers for Disease Control, and current examples of school sex education policy is used to make recommendations for the standardization of comprehensive sexual health education in K‐12 schools. This article describes the necessary components to adopt CSE equitably, and provides an example of the process implemented to improve CSE in 1 school district in Pittsburgh, PA. Implications for School Health Policy, Practice, and Equity: Understanding the key components of legislation that align with recommended standards, and the process of advocating for school policy change, allows local advocacy groups and education policymakers to create and pass feasible legislation that will ensure appropriate instruction. There is additional room for improvement in states and local districts that have current CSE legislation, to adopt approaches grounded in frameworks that critically evaluate social determinants of health and amend legislation to further improve health equity. Conclusions: Several states and local districts have passed CSE regulations, and are implementing and evaluating their efficacy, providing support and examples for other regions interested in adopting similar policies and processes. Pittsburgh Public Schools can be used as an example adapting current legislation and adopting more comprehensive language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical policy analysis is concerned with the discursive linguistic practices and social justice implications surrounding the passage of Florida's controversial "Parental Rights in Education Act" (PREA), which enacts limitations on classroom instruction involving topics related to gender and sexuality. Foregrounding this essay lays a call for social work scholarship to recognize the significance of the critical semiotic and post-structural turn in social science research, which evinces the importance of attending to the nuanced relationship between discourse, power, ideology, and identity formation. As a field espousing the tenets of social justice and commitments to the broader aims of social equality, social work holds an inherent investment in understanding the politics of language and, by extension, the language of emancipatory change. Informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) and feminist post-structural thought, this analysis brings to the forefront the relevance of discourse, language, and semiotics as crucial objects of inquiry and seeks to examine what norms are in operation in the context of this legislation. What can discourse reveal about the nature of the social problem as postulated by PREA, and what discursive implications might it contain? Ultimately, this analysis contends that PREA represents a new threshold of educational and queer surveillance, best understood when bracketed by the ideologies of neoliberalism, cis-/heteropatriarchy, and the concomitant articulation of transphobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a major global health challenge. Extant literature shows that CSA is prevalent in Kenya. As a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Kenyan government is mandated to ensure that children are protected from sexual abuse through sound laws and policies. This paper reviews existing laws and policies on CSA and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Our findings indicate that laws on child protection exist and are protective to a large extent, as harsh penalties are outlined for sexual offences. Survivors of CSA are entitled to free legal and medical services. However, there are no reparations offered to survivors in criminal proceedings. Moreover, there is no legislation on age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education which plays an important role in cultivating positive gender norms and describing what constitutes CSA and reporting procedures. The national standard operating procedures for the management of sexual violence against children lack CSA screening procedures. There is urgent need for review of these laws and policies and development of multisectoral protocols at the national and county level, that outline roles and responsibilities for various service providers, supervisory and accountability measures and referral networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the current discussions on sex education in public high schools, with particular attention to the implementation of the Integral Sexual Education Law 26.150, after ten years of his publication. To perform this analysis, it is assumed that the aforementioned law would not appear clearly and explicitly in daily teaching practices at the secondary level. In this line, we believe that the enactment of the law and the information contained in its articles would not coincide with the implementation of it. Accompanying this hypothesis, we believe that sexuality, played as contemporaneoussocial problems, it is influenced and mediated by dramatic historical and social changes that prevent an orthodox and unchanging definition can clarify its methodological approach. Both its vagueness, as its theoretical inaccuracy, realizes susceptible space of ambiguous and precarious interpretations. The proposed analysis adopts a mixed approach, which includes a tour of key authors, official documents related to the field of sexual education and analysis of quantitative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This Article argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law's apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. This Article is the first to compare the full spectrum of minors' reproductive rights and the first to unmask deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction - in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents' reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents' access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents' rights as parents. The Article's analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script - that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This Article also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision making relating to pregnancy and parenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005, an education reform swept across Quebec high schools, leading to the disappearance of a mandatory sexual health curriculum. Arguing that the responsibility for children's sexual health education fell on multiple shoulders, the Ministe` re de l'E' ducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS) of Quebec proposed that teachers, nurses, community organizations, and parents, work together to regularly include discussions of sexuality in different facets of school life, from classroom discussions to extracurricular projects. Instead of this, news reports and recent studies show that sexual health education is inconsistently offered across the province, and often not offered at all. Time constraints, diverging ideologies between stakeholders, feelings of confusion over the ministerial guidelines and stakeholders' roles, and a lack of teacher education are major challenges to the effective delivery of sexual health education in Quebec. In this article, I explore these issues, and compare the provincial sexual health education framework with the Public Health Agency of Canada's Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education to illustrate gaps in Quebec's current approach to providing sexual health education in the schools. Finally, I critically examine the key elements of the recent pilot project announced by the Quebec Ministry of Education, and suggest that education policy-makers take the past reform issues and the Public Health Agency's guidelines into consideration as they move forward with the new sexual health education initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives To share Portugal's experience with school-based sexuality education, and to describe its implementation at a local level, following an ecological model and using a mixed methodology approach. The study also examines the impact of the latest policies put into effect, identifying potential weaknesses and strengths affecting the effectiveness of sexuality education enforcement. Methods A representative sample of 296 schools in Portugal was analysed. Teachers representing the school completed a questionnaire and were asked to share any kind of official document from their sexuality education project (such as curriculum content). A subsample of these documents was analysed by two coders. Quantitative analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics. Results The majority of Portuguese schools delivered sexuality education, in line with Portuguese technical guidelines and international recommendations. There were common procedures in planning, implementation and evaluation of sexuality education. Some strengths and weaknesses were identified. Results highlighted the impact of the various systems on the planning, enforcement and evaluation of sexuality education in school. Conclusions The latest policies introduced valuable changes in school-based sexuality education. A way of assessing effectiveness of sexuality education is still needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the challenges and proposed changes in the legislations regulating sex education in schools of the several states of the U.S. Topics discussed include challenges to statutes that limit topics such as sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and human sexuality in sex education curriculum, political developments during the 2012 election cycle related to sex education, and federal funding for both abstinence-only sex education programs.

This paper aims to study the latest developments in the Spanish legal controversy on the compatibility with the constitutional principle of non-discrimination based on sex of the financing agreements between Administration and schools providing single-sex education. To this end, it analyses first the legal characterization of educational financing agreements. Then it makes a succinct reference to the controversy over single-sex education, focusing on its legal aspects. Finally, the paper studies the financing agreements between Administration and schools providing single-sex education and their legal situation today, in the light of the provisions of Article 84.3 of the Spanish Basic Education Act and the case law interpreting it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon analysis of policy documents and interviews with key policy makers and professionals co-ordinating Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in various settings, this paper interrogates the socio-political drivers underpinning SRE policy and practice with reference to the contemporary Welsh context. In media output in the UK context and beyond, there have been widespread public concerns about the over-sexualization of young girls, sexual grooming and the increasing commercialization of sex. These issues are also significant in Wales, but a different socio-political culture has led to different public pronouncements and a distinctive SRE approach. In this paper, we outline relatively new Welsh Assembly Government guidance on SRE (March 2010) in the context of a devolved education system. We argue that the characteristics of the Welsh approach to SRE include an emphasis on children’s rights and citizenship values, together with efforts to make SRE delivery more multidisciplinary and integrated. We also identify a different political rhetoric around sexual morality and family values, compared with that of England. This more progressive approach to SRE policy making, implementation and delivery in Wales is contrasted with the more heated pronouncements on the subject emanating from Westminster, particularly in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses no promo homo elements in sex and health education laws in the U.S. cities which include Alabama, Arizona and Oklahoma. It mentions that the Alabama legislature enacted a law which states that less content should be included in sex education program and curriculum and the Oklahoma legislature enacted a law which offers education on AIDS prevention. According the Arizona legislature, districts should not include contents in the curriculum which promotes homosexuality.

The article focuses on sex education in public schools in the U.S. in 2012. Topics include state and federal sex education policy, abstinence-only sex education policies, and federal funding for sex education programs. Information is provided on the effectiveness of sex education and the legal challenges to sex education programs.

The article focuses on sex education in schools and the disagreement between parents, the public, and policy makers on the best way to prevent sexual activity among teenagers. The social and political influences surrounding the different types of sex education programs are discussed including abstinence-only and comprehensive sexuality education. The results of a study of undergraduate students in the southeastern U.S. are presented, including the differences between the knowledge of students taught an abstinence-only curriculum versus those taught the comprehensive sexual education curriculum.

This article discusses 'The Sexualisation of Young People' review, authored by Dr Linda Papadopoulos in 2010 for the UK Home Office. The article examines the review as an academic piece of work, considers it in the context of debates about young people, violence and sexualization, and discusses the characteristics and significance of rhetorical accounts that operate as 'laments' about sexualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary-school students in the United States score notoriously low on tests of their reproductive and sexual knowledge despite attempts by educators and legislators to provide them with informative sex-education courses. In this paper, we build from narrative theory to explore how low-income women perceived their formal sex-education experiences and how they connected those experiences to their sexual-health knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Drawing from interviews with 30 low-income women, we identify and develop a typology of sex-education narratives: narratives of regret, narratives of satisfaction, and narratives of uncertainty. We also investigate existing theoretical claims that lapses in time between lived events and the narration of those events connect to sensemaking efforts. We find that younger women in the sample were more likely to tell narratives of uncertainty than were older women. These results have implications for the study of narrative theory, sexual-health communication, and the discourse of public sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short article we revisit “Deconstructing virginity” published in Sex and Relationship Therapy in 2000. The article was based on data from two largely qualitative studies of young people's sexuality: the Women Risk and AIDS project and subsequent Men, Risk and AIDS project, which were funded in the late-1980s in the light of the threat of HIV and AIDS. They constituted the first UK-based major empirical investigations of young people's heterosexual understandings and practices. Here we place that article in its own time and in the current context of research, practice and culture in relation to young people and sexuality. We comment briefly on how key ideas in “Deconstructing virginity” and these early studies have been developed in subsequent research, considering critical biographical moments as a way of exploring the relationship between the individual and the social and narratives of loss and gain as a medium for negotiating conflict and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we compare federal government influence on abstinence-only programs in 1999 and 2003 to better see how shifts in the federal government's sex education polices impacted other government and community actors. Using data from the Sex Education in America Surveys (SEAS), we find that changes in federal policy, particularly after the year 2000, significantly altered the influence of state and local governments and the involvement of other community actors on school sex education programs. As federal influence increased, the number of abstinence-only programs continued to grow. The influence and involvement of other key actors declined, changing the face of sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several legal aspects of teaching sex education in public schools in the U.S. It explores the state policy concerning sex education laws, the problems and proposed changes to state statutes, and the federal funding for abstinence-only programs. It also discusses the proposal of President Barack Obama to redirect abstinence-only education funding to new teen-pregnancy prevention programs such as birth control.

Here we present some lines of analysis on the making of the Law of Integral Sexual Education in Buenos Aires adopted in 2006. Formed after lively debate, this law implied the activation of a series of discursive procedures of power and normalization that enabled the birth of the official curriculum for sex education. It highlights the involvement of a medical discourse and a moralizing discourse --specifically Catholic-- in the prescription of identity and ideal bodies; in other words healthy, normal, heterosexuals. Such instances simultaneously and necessarily produced exclusion, defining an abject space for those identities and bodies which are opposed to the heteronormative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of the government in assuring accurate sex education in the U.S. State and federal government are expected to provide statutes mandating sex education should provide accurate information to the students. However, the social condition has been affected by the outcomes on the lack of knowledge to sex which include Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and teen pregnancy.

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo recognized the centrality of reproductive health to human rights and development. Progress on the Cairo agenda has slowed for numerous reasons, however. The United States, once an enthusiastic promoter of this agenda and still the world's leading reproductive health donor, has revised its reproductive health policies radically since the 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush. This study examines how policies have been reconfigured in five key reproductive health areas, sparking controversy both in the United States and internationally. These categories are the content of sex education, access to emergency contraception and to abortion services, condom effectiveness, and HIV/AIDS prevention. The analysis presented here elucidates how ideological considerations have superseded public health and ethical concerns and reflects on health and ethical consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venezuela bas shown important advances in the reduction of total fecundity. In this process, called the "fecundity transition" by the demographic literature, women of all ages have taken part. Nevertheless, since some time ago, the adolescent fecundity does not follow a regular trend to the fall and, on the contrary, their rates have increased to similar levels of fecundity like at the end of the 80's. That has led us to formulate the question that titled this work: Are the adolescents excluded from the transition of the fecundity in Venezuela? This article has as main purpose to study the trends of the adolescent fecundity and identify which groups have helped to increase his level. The results confirm that among the most educated young women the probability of being a mother in early ages is definitely smaller. It is necessary that public policies designed for the prevention of pregnancy in adolescence try to work in the factors that impede the permanence of the young women at the school. This analysis is based on indirect estimations of fecundity derived from the application of the own-children method to the last censuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the current legislation requiring sex education as part of the school curriculum in Portugal, great obstacles to its implementation remain. Furthermore, sex education is far from being systematically administered. Thus, the main interest in our project was to validate a scale that measures teachers' attitudes towards sex education. There are to date no scales in the literature, with tested psychometric characteristics, that achieve this objective. Hence in this work we constructed the Sex Education Teachers' Attitudes Evaluation Questionnaire and we proceeded to validate it. This questionnaire also includes a scale of knowledge of sex education and one of comfort with the themes of sexuality. The 176 individuals who participated in this research are teachers from the second and third basic educational levels and from high school. The scales revealed great consistency and adequate validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the laws related to sex education in the United States. Most of the Americans believe that sex education should be taught in public schools. There is a wide variation in the sex education laws throughout the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Many states specifically regulate topics such as abstinence, homosexuality, sexually transmitted disease prevention and HIV/AIDS education. About half of the states require their schools to provide classes on sexuality, disease, prevention or reproduction. The U.S. Congress passed the first of these laws in 1981 as the Adolescent Family Life Act. In 1996, federal lawmakers passed a similar provision, which sets aside $135 million of federal funds per year to fund abstinence-only programs. The common element of sex education statutes are "opt-out" and "opt-in" provisions. Out of the thirty-two states that require or permit sex education, the statutes of twenty-five states contain opt-out-opt-in provisions. It is concluded in this article that to prove the efficacy of comprehensive, medically accurate sex education versus abstinence-only education it is important for a "neutral" organization such as Congress to investigate the efficacy of such programs.

Most people in Bangladesh are rural, poor and underprivileged. The incidence of sexual disease has increased, but little has been done to educate rural people about sexual and reproductive health. In 1997, a sexual and reproductive health project was initiated within a collaborative research agreement between the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), an indigenous non-governmental organization which pursues integrated rural development strategies. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 65 different women, men, boys and girls revealed significant sexual health problems and a lack of knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. The interviews were transformed into composite problem-solving picture stories and information about sexual and reproductive health. Stories mirrored respondents' interpretations of sexual behavior. Those who had achieved or ascribed legitimacy to talk about sex, e.g. traditional health providers, were trained to utilize the methods and materials. Qualitative evaluations revealed important changes in health providers' self-confidence, business and personal interactions as well as changes in clients' behavior. This project found that sexual and reproductive health education can be integrated into indigenous health activities if the sociocultural context in which sex, relationships, risks, diseases and communication occur is reflected in a program's content and methods. Unquestionably, there is a great need for sex education in rural Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on Section 2A of the Local Government Act of 1986 of Great Britain. Prohibition on promoting sexuality by teaching or by publishing material; Cancellation of the provision through a Local Government Bill introduced in the House of Lords in November 1999; Opposition to the proposed repeal of section 2A in the House of Lords.

Presents several Supreme Court cases. Wittmer v. Peter; Stromberg Metal Works Inc. v. Press Mechanical Inc.; Brown v. Hot, Sexy & Safer Productions Inc.

The ruling Law and Justice party, and other conservatives, are stigmatising effective sex education and hampering access to abortion. The adverse effects of the nature of sex education in Poland - for example, its emphasis on discouraging contraception - are exacerbated by regressive legislation in other areas, most notably concerning abortion. [Extracted from the article]

The aims of this study were to explore adolescents' levels of knowledge on sexual health issues and their views on the sex education they receive as part of their compulsory education. Twenty students from two schools completed a short questionnaire and participated in a focus group discussion. The students had an excellent level of knowledge about sexual health issues, which contradicts Government views that ignorance is the key to adolescents' sexual health concerns (Social Exclusion Unit 1999). Participants felt their sex education was 'too little, too late' and that it should be taught by someone other than a teacher. Sex education should be introduced earlier in the curriculum as well as finding an acceptable 'teacher' if adolescent sexual health is to improve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]