In response to their experiences of heteronormative and cisnormative cultures in school contexts, some young people undertake various forms of action within their schools with the intention of changing practices, school environments, or school policies. This student-led action can be understood as a form of activism but it may also be seen as the…

Adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) tend to receive inadequate comprehensive sex education (CSE). This problem could be addressed by providing sex education taught by general education health teachers to students with IDD in high school, a cost-effective yet underutilized and under researched service model. This…

A scoping review was conducted, analyzing peer-reviewed literature published between 1995 and 2022, focusing on school stakeholders' perceptions of K-12 health education (HE) in Canada. The results included 37 studies, with articles focused on the perceptions of students, in-service and pre-service teachers, parents, undergraduate students, and…

Background: Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is increasingly gaining traction within the international community. CSE is regarded as an important means of informing young people about their rights and sexual health, improving public health outcomes and contributing to sustainable development. Context and objective: Considerable variation…

South Carolina ranks 16th in the USA for highest rates of teenage pregnancy. The South Carolina Comprehensive Health Education Act (CHEA) does not require medically accurate, unbiased, culturally appropriate materials, and varies greatly in compliance and implementation. This study aimed to better understand parents' perspectives in one county in…

No other facet of curriculum has stoked as much debate in schools across the United States as sexuality education (Corngold, 2013). However, it is now the widely held consensus that some form of sexuality education should be implemented in public schools. The "Professional Standards of the National Association of School Psychologists"…

Curriculum change involves struggles among political actors and interest groups, and those efforts related to sex education have been noted for their particularly vexatious character. When Doug Ford was elected Premier of Ontario, Canada in 2018, he immediately repealed the comprehensive health curriculum of 2015 and attempted to muzzle teachers…

Kathleen Quinlivan is passionate about raising the profile and quality of sexuality education in schools. As a past secondary school teacher and current university associate professor she strives to bring research and practice closer together, keeping both connected with students' and teachers' everyday lives. In March this year Kathleen ran an…

State sex education standards in public schools vary widely. According to a study from the National Institutes of Health, only about half of adolescents receive school instruction about contraception before they first have sex. Only 20 states require information on condoms or contraception, and only 20 states and the District of Columbia require…

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…

A post-hoc study was conducted to ascertain the effect of comprehensive sex education on of 7th graders' knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes regarding sexual health and sexual identities in a small city school district in the Midwest USA. All five middle schools in the district participated, three of which used a comprehensive curriculum and two…

Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to examine the research evidence concerning the views and experiences of people with intellectual disabilities regarding their participation in and the effectiveness of relationship and sex education programmes. Methods: A systematic search of relevant electronic databases was conducted using…

This article offers an empirically grounded contribution to scholarship exploring the ways in which pleasure is 'put to work' in sex and sexuality education. Such research has cautioned against framing pleasure as a normative requirement of sexual activity and hence reproducing a 'pleasure imperative'. This paper draws on interviews with sexual…

In the United States, sex education in schools varies significantly across districts. Many schools operate without state-guided health education curricula, leaving decisions up to individual districts. The purpose of this study was to explore what type of sex education is being offered in U.S. high schools in addition to assessing the frequency of…

Teaching elementary students about sexual health is not a common practice in the United States; however, the ability of children to understand and prevent sexual abuse could be learned in programs dedicated to improving communication about safe touch and boundaries. This study evaluates a program (i.e., "My Body, My Boundaries")…