Conceptualizing and Measuring a Rights-Based Approach to Sexuality Education

For more than a century, the question of how adolescents should be taught about their emerging sexuality and sexual health has been debated in schools, within communities, and across the public sphere. Today, most efforts to provide formal sexuality education fall under two models: abstinence-only programs, which promote the benefits of restraint from sexual activity, or abstinence-plus programs, which encourage abstinence and offer lessons on safer sexual practices. The lack of consistent, compelling evidence for these widely used approaches has reinforced the need, among some leaders in the field, to reconsider the paradigm as a whole. They advocate for a shift from a narrow emphasis on reducing the risks of adolescent sexual activity toward a positive, holistic emphasis on the healthy sexual development of young people. The term "rights-based" has become increasingly linked to this concept of a more comprehensive approach to sexuality education. Discussions of a rights-based approach to sexuality education have become increasingly common in both international and U.S. contexts over the past decade. Among a small but growing group of program developers, funders, health educators, and scholars, the idea of addressing contextual factors such as gender norms, power differentials, and sexual rights within sexuality education has gained enthusiastic backing. While preliminary evidence from basic science and theoretical guidance lend support to this interest, there is little direct evidence for concluding that that this new approach is preferable to existing models. This dissertation was developed to offer a critical exploration of this new paradigm for sexuality education. In the first paper, "A Rights-Based Approach to Sexuality Education: Conceptualization, Clarification and Challenges," I present a conceptual definition for a rights-based approach to sexuality education that is consistent with and gives structure for understanding the guidelines, curricula, research