Guest Speakers and Sexuality Education: An Ethnographic Look inside One California High School

Abstract

Adopting an ethnographic lens, readers are provided a look inside a California high school sexuality education classroom. On this chosen day, two invited guest speakers from an outside company are teaching students about pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, and risks associated with having sex. Analysis of the guest speakers’ pedagogical strategies and accompanying curricula reveal exclusionary abstinence-only ideologies that provide students with limited and narrow constructions of commitment, romance, love, and sexuality. Although considered to be a comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education classroom space, content delivery strategically instills fear and disseminates misinformation. Through classroom observations and student interviews, findings highlight the need for increased attention to guest speakers’ involvement in sexuality education classrooms.

Keywords:

• Guest speakers
• sex education
• high school
• curriculum and instruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article’s data were collected as part of a larger critical ethnography (Groves, 2003; Madison, 2020) interested in understanding California comprehensive sexuality education in high schools since the California Healthy Youth Act passed in 2015 (A.B. 329). This legislation mandates comprehensive, unbiased, and medically accurate sexual health education and HIV prevention education for California’s publicly funded schools: a requirement for students once in middle school and once in high school.