Global Perspectives and Key Debates in Sex and Relationships Education: Addressing Issues of Gender, Sexuality, Plurality and Power

Sex and relationships education curricula and provision are being discussed, debated and problematized with an increasing sense of urgency in many countries around the world. Existing research has investigated on-going areas of consideration in relation to sex and relationships education, including youth perspectives, its organisation and delivery, and the shifting emphasis from sexual health to sexual rights within its curricula. Increasingly, there are calls to focus more explicitly on gender, sexuality, plurality and power within sex and relationships education. A number of socio-cultural, political and legal shifts have taken place in a range of contexts which have created space for discussing issues of gender and sexual equality and plurality within education. These include: violence against women and girls, sexual consent, pornography and digital cultures, sexual diversity and religious plurality. This collection brings together cutting-edge research from the global North and South on each of these issues, to establish an evidence base from which to argue that they are vital to include in sex and relationships education.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Global Perspectives and Key Debates in Sex and Relationships Education: Setting the Scene; Vanita Sundaram and Helen Sauntson 1. School-based sex and relationships education: current knowledge and emerging themes; Felicity Thomas and Peter Aggleton 2. Postfeminist Media Panics over girls' 'sexualisation': Implications for UK sex and relationship guidance and curriculum; Jessica Ringrose 3. The challenges, contradictions and possibilities of teaching about pornography in SRE: The Australian Context; Debbie Ollis 4. Where does violence against women and girls work fit in? Exploring spaces for challenging violence within a sex-positive framework in schools; Vanita Sundaram, Claire Maxwell and Debbie Ollis 5. From 'no means no' to 'an enthusiastic yes': changing the discourse on sexual consent through Sex and Relationships Education; Maddy Coy, Liz Kelly, Fiona Vera-Gray, Maria Garner and Ava Kanyaredzi 6. Discursive silences: critically analysing the presence/absence of sexual diversity in the sex and relationships guidance for England and Wales; Helen Sauntson and Vanita Sundaram 7. A radical plurality: Re-thinking cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education in Aotearoa New Zealand; Louisa Allen and Kathleen Quinlivan 8. 'I felt confused; I felt uncomfortable...my hair stood on ends' Understanding how teachers negotiate comfort zones, learning edges and triggers in the teaching of sexuality education in South Africa; Dennis Francis

About the Author :
Vanita Sundaram is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of York, UK. Her research focuses specifically on gender-based violence and teenagers; gender and sexualities equality work in schools; 'everyday sexism' and education; and lad cultures in higher education. She is the author of numerous publications on these issues, including Preventing Youth Violence: Rethinking the Role of Gender in Schools. Helen Sauntson is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at York St John University, UK. Her main teaching and research areas are: language, gender and sexuality; language and education; and gender, sexualities and education. She is the author of Approaches to Gender and Spoken Classroom Discourse, co-author of New Perspectives on Language and Sexual Identity, co-editor of Gender and Language Research Methodologies and co-editor of Language, Sexualities and Desires: Cross-Cultural Perspectives.