The age of the onset of menstruation, termed menarche, has been declining for decades worldwide. Approximately 12% of Australian girls reach menarche between eight to 11 years of age. Current health and physical education subject guidelines from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority state that puberty education should be…

Trans and non-binary youth (TNBY) face high levels of interpersonal and social adversity as well as disproportionate rates of mental health issues such as depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Among protective factors, context plays a key role. In addition to parental support, access to gender-affirming medical care begins to emerge as…

Participation in physical activity (PA) tends to decline between childhood and adolescence, and in Australia the bulk of this decline has been shown to occur in the domain of non-organised PA (e.g. active play, informal sports). A better understanding of the reasons for the decline in non-organised PA may support strategies to counter barriers and…

Background: People with disability have the same sexual and reproductive health needs and rights as people without disability, yet experience considerable barriers in accessing information and services. The Reproductive and Family Health Association of Fiji, Family Planning Australia, and disability stakeholders implemented a comprehensive…

Secondary data analyses from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children Kindergarten cohort were performed to understand any alterations in pubertal timing in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a population sample. Timing of parent-reported pubertal events (ages 8-9, 10-11, 12-13 years), and self-report (14-15 years; N = 3454 no ASD, N = 94 with…

Composing Territory is a research project with two main aims. The first aim is to identify optimal composition and arrangement techniques for choral works written for female singers from various linguistic backgrounds in the Northern Territory whose voices are undergoing pubertal changes. The second aim is the creation of twelve choral…

Social anxiety is a common mental disorder with an average age of onset in early adolescence. Current theories focus largely on risk factors that are present from early in life, but reasons for onset of the disorder as youth move into adolescence are rarely discussed. We recently proposed a model of the onset of certain mental disorders during the…

Women's artistic gymnastics is commonly understood to require early entrance and intense training during childhood. Most gymnasts retire before reaching adulthood. In recent years, the gymnast population at the highest level has "aged." In this article, we adopt a socio-pedagogical perspective to explore the training contexts, pubertal…

All children need timely puberty and sexuality education. The task falls to schools because they have the learning and teaching processes, competency programmes, opportunities, and resources for age-appropriate cognitive, knowledge, and skills development in children and adolescents. Quality sexuality education guidance documents have been…

Physical activity may benefit mental health, yet the potentially protective role of elementary school physical education (PE) on childhood mental health is unknown. The aim of the current study was to determine the effect of a specialist-taught PE program on indicators of childhood mental health. In this cluster-randomized controlled trial,…

This paper analyses some contemporary educational contexts that teachers should consider for their puberty education programmes and/or curricula, for primary and secondary school students. The educational contexts addressed here include significant international puberty education framework documents, socio-biological factors including earlier…

The processes of puberty, including reproductive fertility and social-role transitions, now begin earlier, last longer, and are experienced in very different contexts. Because of this, all children and adolescents need good-quality puberty education in school curricula, and this need is supported by positive cost-benefit analysis and international…

There is a growing consensus amongst policy makers, education professionals, researchers, and the public that a modern education system should develop a 'whole child' providing a balanced set of cognitive, social and emotional skills to face the challenges of an increasingly uncertain and volatile world. Social and emotional development are…

To date, people with intersex variations have been mainly studied via small-scale clinical research, with only a small amount of reflective commentary contributed by sociocultural scholars. This paper reports on findings from a 2015 online Australian survey of 272 people with intersex variations, which aimed to redress the gap in research on this…

The processes of puberty are now commonly observed in primary school-aged students. Schools, therefore, need to address puberty and sexuality education for students' health, well-being, safety and pastoral care. Similarly, preservice teacher education needs to address future primary school teachers' unfamiliarity and lack of confidence with these…