Background: Early sexual reproductive health (SRH) education is linked to a reduction in risky sexual behaviors. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are rising at alarming rates. Risky sexual behaviors, including initiation of sex before age 13, having more than four sexual partners, and lack of use of condoms, increase the chance of infection…

Purpose: Immigrant youth face both unique and disproportionate barriers to sexual health. Targeted sexual health education to redress these disparities requires creative and inclusive approaches that consider personal and community challenges and strengths. This study piloted a novel intervention: SExT: Sex Education by Theatre, a theatre-based,…

Young people aged >15 years (Years 11 and 12 students) in Australia are unlikely to receive school-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education. The aims of this study were to gather the perspectives of young people regarding their experiences of school-based SRH education and explore what they considered should be the core components…

While consent forms part of the Health, Wellbeing and Relationships strand of the New South Wales (NSW) Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in Australia, it is not consistently or effectively delivered within schools. The recent e-campaign, "Teach Us Consent" in NSW, drew attention to the alarmingly…

Young people tend to have low levels of sexual health literacy. The aims of this work were to explore health professionals' perspectives of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education in Australia and what they considered should be the core components of SRH curriculum, particularly for Year 11 and 12 students. In September and October, 2021,…

Background: Education about healthy and respectful relationships (HRR) is a key component of comprehensive sexual health curricula and is supposed to be universally provided in Oregon. This study: (1) assesses the extent to which high school students with disabilities received HRR education, and (2) examines associations between HRR education and…

Biology, a living science, is known as a balance and complement among other branches of science. Just like the science of biology, biology as a course also plays a very important role among other courses at all school types and grades. It is thought that the adults of the future should not be deprived of knowledge in the field of biology and…

Research demonstrates that teachers' cultural perspectives influence how they teach sexuality education; however, it is not clear how this occurs. Therefore, in my study, I explored how Xhosa teachers' cultural perspectives influenced their practice of teaching sexuality education to adolescent Xhosa learners. I purposively selected 9 female Xhosa…

Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially-economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target…

Background: This process study is a companion to a randomized evaluation of a school-based, peer-led comprehensive sexual health education program, Teen Prevention Education Program (Teen PEP), in which 11th- and 12th-grade students are trained by school health educators to conduct informative workshops with ninth-grade peers in schools in North…

The stakes are high for sex education in South Africa: it has been estimated that 8.7% of young people live with HIV. Within primarily US and UK contexts, there has been much debate over the relative merits of abstinence-only and comprehensive sexual education programmes. These perspectives have largely been presented as irreconcilable, but…

School-based sexuality education remains a key response to the HIV epidemic. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study, this study explores how young people engage with sexuality and HIV- and AIDS-related education as it is delivered through the Life Orientation (LO) learning area in South Africa, in order to understand the dynamics that…

Would You Rather (WYR), with a Sexual Health Twist! teaching technique uses two youth games, "Would you rather…" and Twister®, to actively engage students in developing decision-making skills regarding human sexuality. Utilizing the "Would you rather" choices, the teacher provides a short scenario with two difficult choices.…

This article discusses the importance of faith-based organizations implementing comprehensive sexuality education into their ministries, including a review of a study of 5,819 religious teens by Christian Community Inc., a nonprofit research and resource development organization. The study by Christian Community Inc. had a major impact in the…

This article analyses the film "Mean girls" (2004) as a window on popular notions of the moral life of American high schools, which straddles Kohlberg's Stage 2 and 3. The film presents loyalty to peer group cliques as a key value, even as it offers an individualist, relativist critique of that loyalty. Gossip is the main transgression in this…