Informing sexuality education through youth-generated anonymous questions

Abstract

This paper examines a comprehensive sexuality education programme, Health Education for Youth (HEY), which incorporates anonymous questions about sex and sexuality that participating youth generate into the curriculum. HEY utilises a social ecology framework, decolonising perspectives and feminist methods to inform the programme, its facilitation and the incorporation of participant questions into the curriculum. This paper describes the theoretical and methodological frameworks; curriculum content and use of anonymous questions; programme and participant characteristics; and types and content of questions asked by youth. Findings indicate that young people utilise their agency to ask important sexuality questions and are concerned about similar types and content of questions regardless of programme setting. The benefits of using a social ecology framework, decolonising perspectives and feminist methods to guide curriculum content and session facilitation are discussed along with the value of incorporating anonymous questions about sex to create sexuality education that is youth driven and youth relevant.

Keywords:

• young people
• sexual education
• youth-generated perspectives
• decolonising perspective
• USA

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ford Foundation and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration – Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Grant Numbers 1H70TI019911 and 1H79TI020138. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views and policies of the funding agencies.