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This article is an experimental, philosophical exploration of what productive possibilities new materialist theory offers for reimagining sexuality education policy. It uses feminist, new materialist [Barad 2007. "Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning." Durham: Duke University Press] thinking to generate an interruption of binary thinking around mind and body in relation to sexuality education. It extends the knowledge/practice gap literature [Allen 2001. 'Closing Sex Education's Knowledge/Practice Gap: The reconceptualisation of young people's sexual knowledge.' "Sex Education" 1 (2): 109-122] to suggest that sexuality education policy should traverse the mind/body dualism so that we no longer think of sexuality's physical and mental/emotional aspects as separate. Grounded in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand policy, this article re-thinks the relationship between sexual knowledge (thinking) and sexual practice (doing) and argues for a sexuality education informed by knowing-in-being. It is suggested that allowing embodied, complex, posthuman knowledges that do not separate mind and body offers an alternative to individual responsibility, which might enable sexuality education to respond differently to the policy problems it seeks to address.

Sexuality education is a compulsory part of "The New Zealand Curriculum" for state-funded schools. In 2015, the Ministry of Education has published an updated revision of their official guidelines for schools on the teaching of sexuality education. This paper employs Foucauldian discourse analysis to argue that this policy document, "Sexuality Education: A Guide for Principals, Boards of Trustees, and Teachers," reflects and reproduces particular ways of knowing which constrain possibilities for socially just sexuality education. These discourses include the adoption of an intellectual approach to teaching sexuality, the mandate to measure learning objectives, and a narrow emphasis on positive sexuality. Intentions for the curriculum to deliver a holistic, socio-ecological vision of sexual health as well as one which embeds Ma¯ori values are undermined by dominant understandings of individual action which shape approaches to both sexuality and pedagogy. Furthermore, the liberal recognition of cultural, ethnic, sexual and gender diversity in the curriculum unintentionally reinscribes an unmarked white, secular, heterosexuality as the norm. This paper reflexively critiques the discursive tensions that inhibit the realisation of sexuality education in schools which meets the needs of diverse students and offers it as a possible site for social justice.