Young People and Sexuality Education : Rethinking Key Debates

What would sexuality education look like if young people designed it? Drawing on ground breaking research with youth, this book innovatively re-envisions the possibilities of sexuality education. Utilising student critiques of sexuality programmes it reconfigures key contemporary debates in sexuality education including: Should pleasure be part of the curriculum? Who makes the best educators? Do young people prefer single or mixed gender classes? Should the role of sexuality education be disease and pregnancy prevention?

Through young people-s rich accounts of learning about sexuality this book conveys their desires, anxieties, frustrations and ambivalences. Addressing a highly contested area of the curriculum, this book aims to shake sexuality education-s foundations by offering a conceptually new way of approaching programmes dedicated to social/sexual justice.

Louisa Allen is Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, at the University of Auckland.