Declining nudes: Canadian teachers’ responses to including sexting in the sexual health and human development curriculum

ABSTRACT

Addressing sexting in sexual health education classrooms is one way of supporting young people to become good sexual citizens and to emphasise respect and consent in their sexual practices and in their lives. While a fair amount of research has worked with youth to understand their motivations for sexting, less research has been conducted with in-service teachers to understand their perspectives, pedagogical approaches, and beliefs regarding young people and sexting. Set in this context, this paper discusses findings from interviews with Canadian teachers who were teaching a new Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum that included discussions of sexting. Our findings suggest that many teachers are still engaging discourses of risk, shame and blame when they talk to their students about sexting. Likewise, longstanding gender norms and stereotypical sexual scripts are evident in the ways in which many teachers both understand and teach sexting. Some teachers, however, are engaging in more promising pedagogical practices that frame sexting as having a range of uses, outcomes, and purposes, painting a more holistic picture of young people’s sexting landscapes. Findings from this paper may be useful for educators and policymakers creating sexting curriculum for young people in educational settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• teachers
• sex education
• sexting
• youth
• schools

Acknowledgments

We thank our collaborators on this research project: Marilou Gagnon, Jen Gilbert, Adrian Guta, Katie MacEntee, Chris Sanders, Alanna Goldstein, Hannah Maitland, Karine Malenfant, Martha Newbigging, Sarah Switzer, Jahdaya Williams and John Antoniw. We also thank participating teachers for generously sharing their experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In 2015, the Liberal government of Ontario introduced a new sex education curriculum, updating it for the first time since 1998. These updates included content about gender identity, sexual orientation and sexualised online interactions. Protests against the new curriculum were led by groups who opposed these inclusions. In 2018, the Conservative candidate for Premier made a campaign promise to repeal the 2015 curriculum. After his election, the Ontario government announced that schools would revert to the 1998 curriculum, sparking protests from those who supported the 2015 update.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada