Sexualities and sensitivities: Queer(y)ing the ethics of youth research in the field

In contemporary Western societies, the years between childhood and young adulthood are commonly understood to be (trans)formative in the reflexive project of sexual self-making (Russell et al. 2012). As sexual subjects in the making, youthful bodies, desires and sexual activities are often perceived as both volatile and vulnerable, thus subjected to instruction and discipline, protection and surveillance. Accordingly, young people’s sexual proximities are closely monitored by social institutions and ‘(hetero)normalising regimes’ (Warner 1999) for any signs that may compromise the end goal of development—a ‘normal’ reproductive heterosexual monogamous adult...

Primary school teachers' conceptions of pedagogical responses to concepts of diverse sexualities

This thesis reports on a social constructionist study that identified teachers' conceptions of their pedagogical responses to concepts of diverse sexualities in primary schools in Queensland. The study shows that teachers face a range of scenarios in which students raise awareness of diverse sexualities as part of their everyday experiences, yet teachers have little guidance about how to respond.

The changing experiences of primary teachers: Responding to scenarios involving diverse sexualities

Sex education and diverse sexualities are controversial topics within the primary school arena. Concepts of childhood innocence have influenced sex education curriculum, policy development and teaching practices within schools. However, research shows that primary school-aged students are aware of and talk about sexualities. The aim of this research is to reveal the pedagogical experiences of primary school teachers in relation to scenarios inclusive of diverse sexualities. Social constructionist theories of pedagogy and phenomenographic methods are used to provide a detailed analysis of the ways in which primary teacher participants conceptualise their encounters with students who introduce concepts of diverse sexualities. This research reveals that primary students ask questions about diverse sexualities, they use homophobic expressions (often as a daily occurrence), they sometimes reveal homosexual feelings to teachers, some have same-sex parents and some are being raised with knowledge of diverse sexualities. Without comprehensive policy and curriculum support, and appropriate professional learning for teachers, teachers are unable to make well informed pedagogical decisions that promote inclusive education.

Embodied sexualities: Exploring accounts of Irish women's sexual knowledge and sexual experiences, 1920-1970

This chapter explores the ways in which sexuality has been understood, embodied and negotiated by a cohort of Irish women through their lives. It is based on qualitative data generated as part of an oral history project on Irish women’s experiences of sexuality and reproduction during the period 1920–1970.1 The interviews, which were conducted with 21 Irish women born between 1914 and 1955, illustrate that social and cultural discourses of sexuality as secretive, dangerous, dutiful and sinful were central to these women’s interpretative repertoires around sexuality and gender. However, the data also contains accounts of behaviours, experiences and feelings that challenged or resisted prevailing scripts of sexuality and gender. Drawing on feminist conceptualisations of sexuality and embodiment (Holland et al., 1994; Jackson and Scott, 2010), this chapter demonstrates that the women’s sexual subjectivities were forged in the tensions that existed between normative sexual scripts and their embodied experiences of sexual desires and sexual and reproductive practices. While recollections of sexual desire and pleasure did feature in the accounts of some of the women, it was the difficulties experienced around sexuality and reproduction that were spoken about in greatest detail. What emerges clearly from the data is the confusion, anxiety and pain occasioned by the negotiation of external demands and internal desires and the contested, unstable nature of both cultural power and female resistance.

Silenced sexualities in schools and universities

This study investigates how sexuality is dealt with at all levels of formal education and focuses on the way sexualities are manufactured in, and by, educational establishments, ranging from primary schools through to universities and colleges.

Drawing on a Foucaultian genealogy to consider the constructions of psychopathology and sexualities in young people

This paper employs genealogical strategies to analyse examples from our own research in education relating to the construction of psychopathology and sexualities. We consider the application of four angles of scrutiny, discontinuity, contingency, emergences and subjugated knowledges (Foucault 1977, 1980, 1988). We explain the four angles of scrutiny and consider how these can be used to produce research practices commensurate with Foucaultian inspired genealogical strategies. For instance, we argue that subjugated knowledges form a critical component of the four angles of scrutiny. We propose that through their subjugation, these knowledges offer a different perspective to dominant knowledges on sexuality and psychopathology. It is our argument that it is precisely via this subjugation that these types of knowledges offer valuable perspectives to the construction of young people. Furthermore, highlighting contingency, discontinuity, emergences and subjugated knowledges makes for provocative moments, both substantively and methodologically, in the task of qualitative analysis.

Sexual sites, seminal attitudes : sexualities, masculinities, and culture in South Asia

This book situates current research into the sexual cultures of South Asia within a cross-cultural perspective. The book argues that in societies undergoing rapid social and cultural change, the construction of sexuality and the discourses that gather around it have a fundamental connection with an entire range of processes - social, cultural, economic, political and global - with which people must engage. The contributors have studied sexuality as a site around which social and cultural ideas may be expressed.

Youth and sexualities : pleasure, subversion and insubordination in and out of schools

These cutting-edge international essays challenge dominant narratives of queer youth predicated on oppression and victimization. As school systems address the emergence of Gay-Straight Alliances and calls to provide equal educational access, researchers, educators and youth workers are paying increasing attention to sexuality, gender and schooling. Yet present discourses are limited to liberal understandings of tolerance, safety, and equity that are defined by a separation of "queer" and "normal." This text documents and offers radical interpretations of the creativity of queer youth in challenging existing practices. Interdisciplinary analyses offer multiple vantage points for reconceptualizing adolescent sexual subjectivities and institutional and cultural practices.

Sexualities and gender in the classroom : changing teacher practice

Despite significant changes in policy and practice, same-sex attracted young people in Australian schools continue to experience high levels of abuse and violence.  The majority of schools are at worst openly homophobic and at least neglectful.  There is a reluctance by health education teachers to recognise and affirm gender and sexual diversity.  This book examines the challenging process teachers go through as they gain the skills needed to be more inclusive in their teaching.  In the context of anew professional learning program, the journey of 14 diverse, yet characteristic, health education teachers is documented and analysed.  The study concludes that whilst there is a range ofpersonal and structural barriers inhibiting change, teachers were nabled to implement many aspects of their professional learning through supported risk-taking.  The findings and analysis will be of itnerst to academics and professionals in health and sexuality education and to those working in health and sexuality education more broadly.

Complicating hetero-femininities : young women, sexualities and girl power at school

This paper is concerned with expanding knowledge of how femininity/sexuality intersections are constituted in secondary schools. Existing studies have drawn upon Judith Butler’s notion of a ‘heterosexual matrix’ in order to understand how intersections of femininity/sexuality are produced in schools through normative discourses of heterosexuality and gender. Drawing on ‘after-queer’ theoretical resources from within cultural studies that focus on the deployment of notions of sexuality within constructions of intelligible citizenship, I explore how the femininity/sexuality intersection within secondary schools might be complicated, when the significance of discourses of ‘girl power’, linked with successful neoliberal citizenship, is considered. I analyse young women’s discussions of key ‘girl power’ icons in popular culture, generated through fieldwork in an elite girls’ school in Australia. Throughout the analysis I explore how understanding intersections of femininity/sexuality in secondary schools requires an analytical framework that can attend to both familiar notions of heterosexuality and gender – and their ongoing currency – as well as how notions of sexuality are mobilized in the production of successful neoliberal girl citizens. I propose that this analytical approach is useful in terms of avoiding the reinscription of sexuality identity categories in education research.