Download shwb-pp - WordPress.com

EQUITABLE
SEXUAL EDUCATION
IN AUSTRALIAN
SCHOOLS
AIMS OF THIS WORKSHOP:
Deconstructing current Curriculum and School policies:
In order to understand how contemporary school curriculum and policies decide
what issues are included, and to what lengths they are considered, it is necessary
to understand how preceding (and in many cases prevailing) ideologies influence
current perceptions, and determinately issue such as sexual identity.
Potential influences on student learning and behavior: Addressing the issue of
sexual education issue in the classroom.
This discussion takes a closer look at learning spaces where Australian curriculum
has placed sexual education. It examines the concept of ‘normative’ perceptions
and identity and problematic social practice of ‘normalizing’. Also questioned is the
inclusiveness of the learning contexts in regards to all sexual identities in Australian
curriculum and policies.
Provide strategies for addressing the issue of equitable sexual education in
Australian schools:
This discussion considers pedagogical practices teachers might consider in order to
effectively and equitably teach sexual education. This discussion also criticizes the
placement of sexual education within science-based learning space; whether this
ideological placement sustains exclusion for students identifying as LGBTIQ and
some alternative learning spaces (subjects) for teaching sexual education.
WORKSHOP PART 1:
Deconstructing current Curriculum
and School policies
Deconstructing school Guidelines, Policies, and
The Australian Curriculum
The following deliberation examines, and to a degree,
remonstrates some of the Australian Government’s Values
for Australian Schools, The Australian Curriculum (ACARA),
and NHS’s Guiding Principles; extracts from The Northcote
Secondary College Student Engagement and Well Being
Policy.
This process in relevant to the workshop focus because it
attempts to emphasise formal and prevailing insufficiencies
within social and cultural equality in Australian schools, and
provide justification for the necessary inclusion of diverse
sexual identity to be specifically included in school
curriculum, policies, and guidelines.
The following 6 values are from the Northcote Secondary College Student Engagement and Well Being
Policy and based on the Australian Government’s nine values, for Australian schools (under each value,
comments will be provided that address problematic functions within education documentation that
publicizes human rights and responsibilities, but neglects formal acknowledgement of diverse identity):
1. Respect: Treat others with consideration and regard, respect another person’s point of
view.
2. Fair Go: Pursue and protect the common good where all people are treated fairly for a just
society.
3. Responsibility: Be accountable for one’s own actions, resolve differences in constructive,
non-violent and peaceful ways, contribute to society and to civic life.
4. Freedom: Enjoy all the rights and privileges of Australian citizenship free from unnecessary
interference or control, and stand up for the rights of others.
5. Understanding, Tolerance and Inclusion: Be aware of others and their cultures, accept
diversity within a democratic society, being included and including others.
6. Honesty and Trustworthiness: Be honest, sincere and seek the truth.
(Keep these conceptual values in mind when considering the information on the next slide)
Assumption = Miscommunication
Closer Readings of Education Documentation.
Firstly, when considering school policy values it is essential to acknowledge that these values
derive from a sustained, collective perspective; progressive social awareness of diverse
identity should not left to assumption. By this I refer to the difference between the informal
progressive social awareness’ and acknowledgment that happens in an individual and social
space, and formal recognition of diverse individual and social identity that must be publicized
in a governmental context.
Governments and Schools need to formally acknowledge all identities within their Curriculum,
Policies and guidelines, and value systems because, as an Australian society that has been
governed for the over 200 years by predominantly white, heterosexual males; it is reasonable
to assume that much of the Australian population is made up of individuals with regulated
opinions about gender and sexual identity.
(Now, imagine that you are not a pre-service teacher that has had access to perspectivechanging information at a tertiary level of education. Re-read the aforesaid values through
the eyes of a culturally uninformed student and consider whether or not they come across as
definitive and compassionate codes of conduct)
The VCAA has taken steps to ‘Review content
descriptors and elaborations to ensure better
representation of relationships and
sexuality’(ACARA, 2016).
The following excepts are taken from the
VCAA Australian Curriculum Health and
Physical Education: Foundation to Year 10
Health contexts for learning: Relationships and
sexuality (as termed by the VCAA)
•
•
•
There was strong support for inclusion of relationships and sexuality as a context
for learning, however it was felt that it was underrepresented in the content
descriptors and elaborations. Key topics such as conception, pregnancy, birth and
safer sexual practices such as contraception and prevention of STIs do not appear
in the document.
Stakeholders expressed concern about the use of the word ‘managing’ in relation
to ‘managing relationships’. The use of the term ‘managing’ could lead people to
believe that relationships just require a cognitive response to what is often very
emotional events and situations.
Consider replacing ‘managing’ with ‘maintaining’ in the following points:
maintaining intimate relationships
establishing and maintaining changing relationships
Health contexts for learning: Relationships and
sexuality (as termed by the VCAA)
Issue: Omission of family diversity
There needs to be acknowledgement that not only will students be same sex attracted and gender
diverse but some students will come from diverse families. This will include some students with
same sex parents.
The concept of family diversity is especially important in the early years when discussing
relationships and conception. We need to ensure adopted children, children from IVF, surrogacy and
other assisted conception treatments, children from same‐sex families, children from single parent
and children from blended families feel they are included.
Proposal: Include ‘family diversity’ as a section within Student Diversity, which identifies the
importance of recognising that students come from diverse families and that the curriculum should
be taught in a way that is inclusive and does not discriminate on the basis of family structure,
parents’ sexuality or methods of conception.
(Excepts taken from Australian Curriculum Health and Physical Education: Foundation to Year 10)
CLOSER READING OF EDUCATIONAL
DOCUMENTATION
• The preceding excepts from the VCAA Australian Curriculum Health
and Physical Education: Foundation to Year 10, acknowledge a
former lack of comprehensiveness in the curriculum, and solutions
are ‘considered’.
Problematic functions of these changes to the VCAA approach to
sexual education can be acknowledged in a discussion of:
1. Which learning context/space is the issue of sexual education
located in.
2. What effort has been made to redirect prevailing perspectives of
school community member (Teacher, students, and parents).
(These concerns are examined in depth in PART 2 of this workshop)
WORKSHOP PART 2: Potential
influences on student learning and
behavior: Addressing the issue of
sexual education in the classroom.
UNDER THE GUISE OF STUDENT HEALTH: THE
EXCLUSIVE POWER OF SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY
Examining ‘normative’ perceptions.
This section of the workshop is concerned with identifying how school curriculum and policies
came to approximate an approach to sexual education. This is a necessary consideration
because in order to deconstruct circumscribed education, antecedent and persisting
ideologies, philosophies and cultures need to be identified, and discussed.
At first glance, Australia’s approach to sexuality education school appears to be
designed to aid students emotional and sexual health and well-being whilst they
traverse the unpredictable terrains that make up the complex landscape of
adolescent school lifestyle.
Closer inspection however, reveals that beneath a health and physical education
curricula that promotes healthy sexual relation and relationship choices with
information and ‘facts’, lies a veiled, subjective discourse. This discourse comes by
way of an apparent scientific justification; anatomical and biological
comprehensions of sex and sexuality. Social sexual contexts are not as easy to
define in an academic realm, and are therefore neglected in Australian school
curriculum and policies.
(Continued in next slide)
Examining ‘normative’ perceptions
(Continued)
THE INFLUENCE OF AN AUSTRALIA CAPITALIST SOCIETY ON THE HEALTH AND
WELL-BEING OF YOUNG PEOPLE. COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL EDUCATION, NEARLY.
Let’s consider governments and political perspectives and how they influence
information and education that young people receive. Unlike the some US states
that enforce a brand of sexual education firmly fixed in abstinence-based ideology,
a contemporary Australia retains a ‘comprehensive’ approach to sexual education
in schools. However it is important to acknowledge Australia’s political history; one
that has some prevailing roots in religious ideology, and was influenced by, as
Shannon and Smith (2015) state, ‘Sexuality education material that was distributed
to Australian young people throughout the mid-twentieth century consistently
referred to the morally unjust practice of […] homosexuality, and exphasised the
imperative of maintaining a positive relationship with God’ (p.642).
Sexual education, for all its ‘comprehensiveness’ abides a persistent controversy
because of these political underpinnings. So Australian young people may have
access to a comprehensive sexual education when compared to God fearing US
states, but contemporary sexual education is not without its harms.
UNDER THE GUISE OF STUDENT HEALTH: THE
EXCLUSIVE POWER OF SCIENTIFIC
UNCERTAINTY(Continued)
Not having access to comprehensive discussions regarding sexual and gender
identity clearly disserves GLBTIQ students who are left with curriculum that is, as
Shannon (2016) states ‘a heterosexualised curriculum which does not reflect – and
effectively serves to invalidate – their lived experience’(p.2).
Essentially what this means is that whilst Australian school curriculum and policy
seeks to project a formal ‘inclusion’ of GLBTIQ identities; deregulating ‘normative’
perspectives of sexual identity is definitively unobtainable without scientific
evidence to support theory. Sexual identity however, can be understood as
deriving from social constructs, contexts and discourses, in which case it appeals to
social sciences for proactive, productive research.
It is important for educators, parents and students to acknowledge that science,
for all its positive influence on human understanding and progression, is
somewhat rootless within the neutral realms of sexual preference and identity.
Science determines fact based on evidence. According to Phelps and Grey (as cited
in Lamb, 2013) ‘within a discourse of science, personal experience is rendered
illegitimate, sentimental, and manipulative because it is not evidence-based’
(p.450). In response to this claim, one may pose the question what is sexual
identity derived from, if not personal experience?
Potential influences on student
learning and behavior: Addressing the
issue of sexual education issue in the
classroom.
At the hand of an oppressive political and cultural history, people identifying as
GLBTIQ are subjected to preclusion due to an ingrained ideology regarding
normative sexual identity. For many young people who identify as heterosexual,
contemporary approaches to sexual education may appear equitable, though, like
the experience of ‘whiteness’ in Australia, which Fee and Russell (2007) refer to as
‘a certain set of behaviours that are historically variable, contested and often
invisible to those who are marked by it, in it’ (p.188), GLBTIQ students often feel
the negative impact of curriculum and policies that, through outward discussion
on sexual equity, hidden intrinsic prejudices.
What this means for young people who identify as GLBTIQ, is that their sexual
identity is continuously seen as a contrast to normative sexuality. And though
curriculum and policy can be seen to be making efforts to be inclusive, GLBTIQ will
continued to be perceived as the human identity that requires special effort from
‘normative’ society to be included.
(Continued in next slide)
Potential influences on student learning and behavior:
Addressing the issue of sexual education issue in the classroom.
(Continued)
This contrasting of ‘normative’ and GLBTIQ sexual identity, as consciously
debated as it may be, has definite negative effects on student learning
and behaviour. This claim is clearly apparent if one considers how, within a
school environment, the opinions, actions, comments and attitudes of
peers influence how comfortable and confident an individual feels within
themselves.
Anxieties about fitting in to a social norm, or rather not being excluded
from a relevant place in school community due to individual identity traits
are contributing factors to psychological well-being and securing a safe
and comfortable environment to learn and grow in. Furthermore, it is
important to consider that the school environment is a space in with
young people’s focus on their own personal narratives development is
extremely active. Hammack & Cohler (2011) refer to this time as ‘a
document of one’s life that provides a sense of coherence, unity, and
purpose as it evolves over time ‘(p.163).
UNEQUITABLE SEXUAL EDUCATION
Potential influences on student learning and behavior
The development of personal narrative is inclusive of social narrative; as
individuals attempt to make meaning from both personal and social
experiences. The school space magnifies this experience because in it,
individuals form a collective group of learners who have been conditioned
from an early age to perceive school as an academic learning space.
Though, with the added complexities of puberty, competing for and
conforming to achieve social status (now in digital format), gender and
sexual identity and pressures to conform to fit both an informal, and
culturally framed formal ‘norm’, the potential influence on a student’s
learning and behaviour will clearly be affected by how they are generally
perceived by peers and officially recognised by school curriculum and
policy.
UNEQUITABLE SEXUAL EDUCATION
Potential influences on student learning and behavior
Individuals develop personal identities through existing in social spaces i.e. schools. Within these
sensory domains, meaning and comprehension is derived from associating social situations and
individual perceptions to create narratives of identity. Within a school space, this process of
constructing personal narrative is not so much a subjective process, but rather dependant on
factors within an ‘normatively’ structured narrative. In this instance, an individual who identifies as
LGBTIQ, and is existing in a educational space i.e. school, is unfairly challenged by, as Hammack et
al. (2011) define it, ‘canonical forms of autobiography in a given cultural and political setting’.
This is to say that student’s learning and behaviour in a school space is influenced by political,
historical, economic factors, as those are the factors largely influencing the design of school
curriculum and policies. In stands to reason that a young person who identifies as LGBTIQ, that
along with enduring the general stresses of school such as homework and extracurricular activities
etc, they also have to work to construct what Fivush (as cited by Hammack et al. 2011) refers to as
‘a counter-narrative or a resistance narrative that fulfills basic human needs for meaning and
integrity’. In the case of LGBTIQ students, whose sexual preference includes, but is not totalized by;
same-sex attraction, Fivush suggests (as cited by Hammack et al. 2011) that for these individuals
‘their experience of desire and identity places them in a position of subordination vis-à-vis a
dominant discourse that privileges heterosexuality’ (p.163).
WORKSHOP PART 3:Provide
strategies for addressing the issue
of equitable sexual education in
Australian schools:
EQUITABLE SEXUAL EDUCATION
Skills and strategies for addressing this
issue in the classroom.
•
•
•
Peer-based learning, as a pedagogical approach is a viable option for designing equitable sexual
education for young people. As previously addressed in this workshop, current methods of sexual
education in secondary schools in problematic; culturally framed from a ‘normative’ perspective
and limited by information that, through cultural underpinning and social norms. In Butler’s words
(as cited by Jones, (2013) ‘social norms do not deterministically decide identities, but provide
frameworks of recognition from which subsequent resistances or decisions can be made, and
predetermine the possibilities of sexual identities permitted as real’ (p.689). The fact that process
of normalizing social groups happens within society, confirms that mineralizing social groups is a
subsequent process. Peer-based learning could be a approach to learning that ensures sexual
education provides relevant information to young people that has come from relevant sources.
Peer-based learning promotes equitable sexual education through equitable planning, delivery and
evaluation because it addresses specific issues concerning specific sexual identities, from relevant
perspectives; the students themselves.
Student participation in student learning ensures positive learning outcomes because it encourages
young people to actively develop and deliver learning content in an accessible form; using their
personal language through discussion and exploration. Peer-based learning equips students with
skills, knowledge and self resoluteness to make informed decisions, determine and regulate the
health and well-being issues that arise in their lives. In conjunction Blake (2005) states ‘the process
of participating is an important health promotion initiative in itself because young people develop
skills, positive beliefs and self-worth, which in turn helps promote health and well being’ (p.246).
EQUITABLE SEXUAL EDUCATION
Skills and strategies for addressing this
issue in the classroom.
•
Parent, teacher, and student communication
•
Community-based approaches to sexual education provide a more comprehensive support network
for teachers to engage with comprehensive delivery of sexual education. Communication between
parents and teachers about their student’s/children’s engagement with sexual education enables
teachers to approach topics of sexuality and sexual identity with more confidence. Seconding this
notion, Shannon (2016) states that ‘teachers are less likely to engage with sexuality education when
they feel they do not have school or community support for the course content) out of fear of
negative repercussions’ (p.4).
Taking into account that teachers and parents that directly make up an adult body of contributors
and distributors of sexual education, it is important to consider how relevant their ideologies and
experiences are compared with the current issues young people encounter with sexual interaction
and identity. Adults need to consider what if feels like to be young in contemporary educational
space. This can only be achieved through communication with their students and their children, a
notion affirmed by Blake (2005) who emphasizes ‘the importance of supportive parents [and] also
the consistency of messages across setting and the willingness of all adults to engage with young
people about health issues and support them in perceiving health as an important resource for
enjoying and achieving in life’ (p. 247).
•
•
EQUITABLE SEXUAL EDUCATION
Skills and strategies for addressing this issue in
the classroom.
Another effective strategy for conducting equitable sexual education could be
designing a learning activity for a social science unit plan. Social theory plays a
considerable role in social science; and sexual identity, perspective, ideology and
understanding are logical studies within a context of social theory. It stands to
reason then, that students and teachers would achieve greater learning outcomes
if sexual education was approached within a learning space that would exercise
reflective research and philosophical consideration, as opposed to a biological
approach that science alone attempts. Meyer (2010) support this approach to
sexual education in her comment that ‘‘The disciplines of History and Social
Studies also lend themselves well to discussions of gender and sexual diversity. […]
Topics can easily be opened up to discussions that involve the lives and
experiences of BGLQT people (p.69).
Within the learning space of the History or Social Studies lesson, diverse sexual
identity can be explored through analysis and discussions focusing on such
historical periods as:
-The gay liberation movement that emerged in the late 1960s due to many of the
post-WWII social issues that gave rise to the civil rights movement.
- The holocaust, and the fact gay men and lesbians, Roma, disabled people, and
other groups were also targeted for extermination in Nazi concentration camps.
References
NORTHCOTE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT ENGAGMENT & WELL BEING POLICY retrieved from:
http://www.nhs.vic.edu.au/sites/default/files/student%20welfare%20discipline%20policy10.pdf
Australian Curriculum Health and Physical Education: Foundation to Year 10 (ACARA, 2016)
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/auscurric/response_from_victoria_hpe.pdf#search=sexual%20e
ducation
Shannon, B. (2016): Comprehensive for who? Neoliberal directives in Australian ‘comprehensive’ sexuality
education and the erasure of GLBTIQ identity, Sex Education, DOI: 10.1080/14681811.2016.1141090
Lamb, S. (2013).Just the Facts? The Separation of Sex Education From Moral. Educational Theory, 63(5),
443-460. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1449830814?accountid=13552
Shannon, B., Smith, S., J. (2015) ‘A lot more to learn than where babies come from’: controversy, language
and agenda setting in the framing of school-based sexuality education curricula in Australia, Sex Education,
15:6, 641-654, DOI: 10.1080/14681811.2015.1055721
Fee, M. Russell, L. (2007). Feminist Theory August 2007 vol. 8 no. 2 187-208
`Whiteness' and `Aboriginality' in Canada and Australia Conversations. DOI: 10.1177/1464700107078141
http://fty.sagepub.com
References (continued)
Hammock, P. L., Cohler, B.J. (2011) Narrative, Identity, and the
Politics of Exclusion: Social Change and the Gay and Lesbian
Life Course, Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
DOI10.1007/s13178-011-0060-3
Jones, T. (2013) How sex education research methodologies
frameGLBTIQ students, Sex Education, 13:6, 687-701, DOI:
10.1080/14681811.2013.806262
Meyer, E.,J. (2010). Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools.
Singapore: Springer.