Navigating with pre-teenage children for sexuality education

ABSTRACT

Sexuality education is important for children’s well-being, peer relationships and safety, yet pre-teenagers and their diverse experiences have remained largely overlooked within the field. In Finland, the national curriculum obliges schools to prevent sexual harassment and homo- and transphobic violence, to provide knowledge on gender diversity, and to support children and youth in developing their sexuality and gender identities. However, there are severe deficiencies in sexuality education that reinforce heteronormativity and leave pre-teenage children to cope with the pressures of normative cultures on their own. Drawing on our creative praxis with Northern-Finnish pre-teenage schoolchildren aged 10–13 years, we explore the ways in which pre-teenagers’ knowledge of age, sexuality and gender, including their diversity, are negotiated and how pre-teenagers disseminate this knowledge to their peers. We also analyse pre-teenagers’ political expression with respect to non-normative genders and sexualities via our arts-based Friendship Workshops. Based on our analysis, we discuss ways in which to develop sexuality education that takes into account pre-teenage children, their diversity, and their safety.

KEYWORDS:

• sexuality education
• gender diversity
• sexualities
• heteronormativity
• pre-teen children
• politics of age

Introduction

Pre-teenage (hereafter pre-teen) children learn about relationships and sexuality in a highly gendered and sexualised world that is full of tensions which they need to navigate in order to find their own paths while responding to the normative standards of the surrounding culture. Pre-teens engage in romantic and sexually toned relationships with their peers, make sense of the sexualised cultural images and messages around them, and survive the gendered and sexual abuses of power they encounter (Marston 2020; Puutio et al. 2021).

There is an urgent need to learn more about pre-teen children’s thoughts and experiences regarding gender and sexuality, including their diversity. In this paper, we draw on our long-term school-based creative and ethnographic research designing affirmative spaces for children and youth to explore their sexuality, gender and ethical relationality.

We address key issues of relevance to the development of sexuality education for pre-teenagers by focusing on three themes. We illustrate how age, gender and sexuality matter in the thresholds and cross-pulls of childhood and youth; how pre-teens both comply with but also contest normative sexuality and gender discourses and demand recognition of diversity; and how pre-teenagers navigate questions of gender and sexuality with educators and the world outside primary school.

The meanings and conceptualisations of sexuality education vary (Jones 2011). As one point of reference, UNESCO defines sexuality education as ‘an age-appropriate, culturally relevant approach to teaching about sex and relationships by providing scientifically accurate, realistic, non-judgemental information’ (UNESCO 2009, 2). In this paper, the key aspects of this definition that we engage with are the ideas of ‘age appropriateness’ and ‘teaching about … by providing … information’. Regarding the former, sexuality education is relevant at all ages but in different ways. The way it is presented to, or organised for, pre-teens should therefore not be based only on what children of a particular age are assumed to be able to understand, nor should it be based on what adults consider as meaningful to children. Instead, it should be based also on what the pre-teens themselves feel they need to know or understand to better navigate the pleasures, pressures and ambivalences of gender and sexuality in their everyday lives.

In Finland, pre-teen children (10–13 years; grades 5–6) study in the primary level of basic education (6–13 years; grades 1–6). This groups pre-teens with younger children, a situation which differs from many other countries where pre-teen children usually study with teenagers. In this paper, we focus on childhood sexuality discourses because primary-level sexuality education and gendered school practices are linked to childhood rather than youth due to this institutional structure of the education system.

In Finnish basic education, themes related to sexuality education are mostly approached from a biological perspective with attention paid to puberty, body development and reproduction in a way that typically emphasises cisnormative gender binary thinking with heterosexual assumptions (Honkasalo 2018). By heteronormativity, we refer to thinking that refuses to see diversity in sexual orientation and gender and that considers a certain way of expressing or experiencing gender, sex and sexuality to be better than others – with the heteromasculinity of boys and the heterofemininity of girls being expected and understood as having biological origins (cisnormativity) (see Bauer et al. 2009; Butler 1990). When this thinking underpins sexuality education, it raises the question of whether the knowledge provided is accurate, scientifically based and non-judgemental.

In the international research on the current state of sexuality education in primary schools, it has been found that teachers feel poorly equipped to teach the subject; that the content and resources of the curriculum are insufficient and do not meet pre-teen children’s needs; and that the dominant pedagogies are too didactic, disengaging, risk-focused, heteronormative, and patronising (see McBride and Neary 2021; Surtees 2005). Depending on the school and the teachers, sexuality and gender diversity topics – those covering all people and all genders and sexualities and not just non-normative genders and sexualities – can be discussed in teaching, but these topics are usually dealt with marginally. Furthermore, cis- and heteronormative practices generally cut through school practices and facilities limiting the possibilities for children’s transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality (Bengtsson and Bolander 2019; Puutio et al. 2023). Pre-teen sexuality education in its current form, therefore, largely leaves children to navigate topics related to sexuality by themselves and to try to find relevant information elsewhere, such as on the Internet or via social media (Marston 2020).

Normative understandings of childhood and diverse pre-teens

The pre-teen age, sometimes also known as ‘tween-age’ (i.e. the years from 10 to 13), is considered an in-between age group at the threshold of childhood and youth. Although sexuality is increasingly part of the pre-teen world experience, their needs are often ignored in primary school curricula and teaching. Sexuality education for pre-teen children is usually rooted in traditional views of childhood sexuality, which have been largely founded on fixed, adult-based, white, Eurocentric, gendered, and middle-class values (Robinson 2008). These values affect how sexuality is understood and addressed (see Bialystok et al. 2020; Bühler-Niederberger 2015; Robinson 2008, 2013).

First, childhood is understood as a stable, universal period (Davies, Simone-Balter, and van Rhijn 2021; Robinson 2013), which prevents the pre-teen years from being seen as a diverse age group that includes, for example, various forms of expression of gender and sexuality. These diverse ways of being and becoming affect the ways children relate to childhood and youth, romantic relationships, and gender and sexual expression, but they are typically not recognised or acknowledged.

Second, childhood is seen as a psychological and biological developmental stage. The developmentalism associated with such a perspective reinforces the idea that sexuality belongs to adulthood, and children are cognitively too young to grasp conversations about gender and sexuality – particularly other than cis- and heteronormative forms (Davies and Kenneally 2020; Robinson 2013; Robinson, Smith, and Davies 2017). Childhood is therefore seen as a sort of a waiting room where children prepare for adulthood. Hence, children’s gender and sexual expression and emotions are not seen as meaningful to their current lives.

Third, childhood is considered a period during which children are untainted by culture. The conception of childhood as a developmental stage connects to the idea of childhood innocence, in which children are seen as ‘pure’ and ‘free’ from the thoughts and emotions related to sexuality that wait in adulthood (Bialystok 2018; Robinson 2013). In line with this perspective, pre-teen children should be protected from sexuality and not be tainted by teaching about gender and sexuality-related topics, which are seen as part of adult culture. The notion of childhood innocence and purity has been criticised for perpetuating heteronormative presumptions of childhood, whereby childhood innocence is racialised, classed and sexed such that the white middle-class female child is seen as the most innocent and in need of protection (Bialystok et al. 2020; Davies and Kenneally 2020; Jarkovská and Sharon 2018, 78; Robinson 2013).

Fourth, in opposition and a subordinate position to adulthood, childhood is seen as a period of limited power, agency and responsibility. Sexual and gender expression are seen as the exclusive realms of adults or spaces in which children are constructed as nonsexual and naïve ‘others’ and perceived to be vulnerable and in need of protection. Behind this is a narrow definition of sexuality as comprising physical acts and desires rather than an integral part of a person’s identity that is socio-materially constructed and constantly reviewed and renegotiated by individuals, including pre-teen children, as agents throughout their lives (Robinson 2008).

Despite these common discourses, which have limited public discussion of childhood sexuality, there is a small but growing body of research on gender, sexuality and relationship education policies and practices (Allen and Rasmussen 2017; Bragg et al. 2018; McBride and Neary 2021; Renold 2019). While this scholarship recognises children’s vulnerability and need for protection, it also considers children as active creators of their gendered and sexual cultures and experiences, and honours their experiences and expertise.

Over the past 10 years, we have participated in this field of research by exploring pre-teen gender and sexual identities (Huuki 2019), peer cultures (Puutio et al. 2021) and sexual harassment (Pihkala and Huuki 2019), as well as children and young people’s gender diverse and non-heterosexual experiences (Keating and Lehtonen 2022; Lehtonen 2021; Puutio, Huuki, and Pihkala 2022). Our research is located within a recent strand of the body of work that employs creative and arts-based methods to create ethically enabling conditions to address these issues by working together with pre-teen children (Pihkala and Huuki 2022).

Sexuality education in the Finnish context

Finland has progressive legislation that criminalises discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics in all its educational institutions. Schools, including primary schools, are obliged to develop and implement a plan to address gender equality and advance anti-discrimination measures. In 2015, the National Board of Education published a guidebook on how schools can advance gender equality and include gender diversity in basic education (NBE 2015). Furthermore, the Finnish Board of Education has included sexual orientation and gender diversity as terms in the latest national basic education curriculum (NBE National Board of Education 2014). Due to this legislation and progressive education policy more generally, Finland is considered a leading country for gender equality (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma 2021).

Nevertheless, many equality problems in Finland are linked to gender and sexuality in the pre-teen years and thus sexuality education in primary schools. Sexuality education is neither systematic nor statutory in Finland. The Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education talks of ‘social, relationship and interaction skills’, the importance of which is highlighted in its value basis and general guidelines (NBE 2014, 19–20). Under this umbrella term, Finnish schools mostly offer sexuality education in the eighth grade to children aged around 14 years. At primary school level, typically within the context of environmental and natural science subject, teaching covers issues related to bodily changes in puberty and reproduction (Honkasalo 2018). National recommendations by the IWH (Institute of Welfare and Health) 2016 indicate the various aspects of sexuality such as masturbation, dating, sexual identities, and the influence of the media, religion, culture, porn and peer pressure on sexuality, that should be taken into account in primary school teaching. However, it is the responsibility of individual schools to decide how these themes are handled. Particular themes that researchers have recently drawn attention to with the aim of providing good quality sexuality education, such as diverse identities, intersecting differences, personal well-being, power, rights and gender equity (Honkasalo 2018; Renold and McGeeney 2017), are typically not engaged with systematically in schools.

In Finnish primary school practices, heteronormativity remains widespread. Textbooks often only cover sexuality and gender diversity issues marginally and typically reinforce heteronormativity and gender normalisation (Kjaran and Lehtonen 2017). Educational outreach work by LGBTIAQ+ organisations mainly takes place at secondary school level (Francis, Kjaran, and Lehtonen 2020). Moreover, there are no proper sexuality education units in Finnish teacher education training programmes or professional learning courses for in-service teachers (Lehtonen 2012; Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma 2021). A recent evaluation study found serious problems and lack of adherence to the requirements of legislation in basic education with regard to equality planning (Mikkola 2020). Particularly at a primary school level, it is not easy for teachers to express their non-normative sexuality and gender identities, which leaves pre-teen children without visible models of diversity (Lehtonen, Tarja, and Elina 2014).

Various forms of gender and sexual abuse of power in pre-teen peer cultures have been recognised as a serious problem in primary schools (IWH 2019; see also Lehtonen 2021). In response, several anti-violence programmes and action plans have been developed. However, typically, these do not take into account sexual and gender-based violence at a primary school level, and they do not offer suggestions as to how teachers should address these problems. Some educational materials have been produced for basic education, mainly under the umbrella term ‘safety education’, but they only weakly engage with the wider, systemic socio-structural constraints that entrench harmful conducive contexts for power inequalities. The measures do not cover the thematic area of sexuality education well and are only narrowly informed by research. There is thus an acute need for research-based sexuality education for pre-teens in Finland, which we aim to support by taking into account the perspectives of pre-teenagers themselves and analysing their navigations with gender and sexuality.

Data and methods

For this paper, we drew on a series of school-based creative research interventions called Friendship Workshops, which we have carried out since the latter half of the 2010s with more than 200 Northern-Finnish pre-teen children. In collaboration with researchers, creative professionals, teacher students and educators, we have designed workshops to investigate and address issues related to gendered and sexualised peer cultures together with children (see, for example, www.fire-collective.com; Huuki 2019; Pihkala and Huuki 2019; Keating and Lehtonen 2022). The workshops, carried out in groups of between 10 to 15 students at a time, have ranged from two-hour workshops to those spanning a full school year and have also involving ethnographic engagement in schools.

The workshops are built on iterative activities of multiple modalities, including drawing, writing, crafting, moving and creating digital animations for children to explore and express the pains, pressures and pleasures related to gender and sexuality in their peer cultures together with the researchers. The activities have been developed to allow children to approach issues of gender and sexuality from their own starting point while supported by the researchers, creative prompts and the affordances of the workshop activities (see e.g. Huuki, Kyrölä, and Pihkala 2021; Pihkala and Huuki 2022).

We start by orienting to the themes at hand and then use arts-activities to begin to explore experience creatively. Within the diverse activities, the aim is to subtly steer children from experience to communicating resistance and envisioning transformation within their peer cultures (see e.g. Huuki, Kyrölä, and Pihkala 2021). Informed by co-production and research activist approaches (Renold and Ivinson 2021) some of the activities are explicitly designed to encourage children to communicate what they would like to say no to, remind adults or their peers of, and see change in policy and practice. This work has generated a range of textual and creative messages which we refer to as political expressions, that pre-teen children have shared as part of their creative making. Most of the expressions have been produced as the children oriented to the workshop themes and art-making by writing down their peer experiences on paper notes. These statements were written anonymously and collected in a jar, so others could not see them. Over the years, we have curated the ‘jarred’ expressions and published some of them in communal artworks and multimedia productions with the children’s permission (www.fire-collective.com).

All encounters with students are underpinned by an research protocol approved by the ethical review board for Human Sciences at the University of Oulu. This includes informed consent by children and their legal guardians prior to the workshops, close collaboration with schools, and a joint commitment to adherence to the schools’ ethical guidelines and practices of support. The design of the workshops aims to create a climate of safety in which to explore sensitive topics such as gender and sexuality by allowing preteens to negotiate their own modes of participation and identify what they want to share in terms of their creative outputs.

The arts-based and ethnographic interventions with children have generated an array of data, such as audio-visual recordings, researcher notes and reflections, and ethnographic notes, as well as children’s artworks and writings about their experiences and thoughts. In coming together to write this paper, this extensive data has provided a springboard for collaborative thinking and analysis. Three of the four authors, Huuki, Pihkala, and Puutio, have been involved in the arts-based workshops and data generation processes in various capacities. Lehtonen, who has 30 years of expertise in research on sexuality and gender diversity in education, joined the team later. Using our knowledge of the data and expertise in the field as a foundation, we started to reflect on how gender, sexuality, and diversity have emerged as phenomena in our research encounters with pre-teenagers. In this paper, we draw on our experiences from the Friendship Workshops, the data produced with and by pre-teen children, as well as our wider knowledge of sexuality education and gender and sexual diversity, which we have accumulated over the years.

From these discussions and reflections, three topical themes are evident that we believe capture pre-teen navigations with gender and sexuality. These themes enable us to begin to map cues for pushing sexuality education further. In the following subsections, we elaborate on these themes: (1) normative childhood discourses and pre-teen navigations of age, gender and sexuality in peer relations; (2) normative gender and sexuality discourses and pre-teen resistance to and demand for diversity; and (3) pre-teen relations with the wider culture and educators in their school environments.

Our aim here is to foreground the rich knowledge and understandings that pre-teens adopt, integrate and employ from their surrounding normative culture to resist violence and envision inclusive and diverse peer relations. We illustrate our analysis with data excerpts and pre-teen children’s political expressions. Focusing on pre-teens as knowledge holders and experts helped us rethink the questions of responsibility and power, and to map routes and orientations that adults could apply to work productively with children on the questions of gender and sexuality.

Findings

Navigations around normative pre-teen age discourses and peer relations

When working with pre-teens in the Friendship Workshops, we noted that the pre-teen period of life is anything but a universal developmental stage with similar experiences of sexuality. Children have diverse views related to corporeality and sexuality – what one can be and what one can do and with whom. Intriguingly, age and age appropriateness play an increasing role in pre-teen corporeality and sexual expression, as peer group activities and material objects associated with different ages are starting to divide students. Pre-teens typically navigate between what is perceived as too ‘childish’ (e.g. wearing children’s clothes, playing with toys, spending time at home and with adults) or too ‘teen’ (e.g. wearing make-up, hanging out late in the city centre, pursuing romantic relationships, wearing tight and fashionable clothes; see Puutio et al. 2021; Pihkala and Huuki 2022).

These navigations connect centrally to the diverse ways in which pre-teens relate to romantic relationships and dating. When children were given the opportunity to write down statements about things that bother them in their peer relations in the Friendship workshops, the expressions indicate how both participation in, and separation from, romantic relationships are characterised by the fear of feeling embarrassed or getting irritated by others. Some children’s political expressions show their wish to maintain romantic relationships and to have others respect them: ‘Do not embarrass me about having ‘crushes’ and ‘Don’t irritate me if I date’. In contrast, others demonstrate their urge to detach from romantically toned relations: ‘I don’t like to be called names because I am not interested in crushes’ and ‘Did you know that stories about crushes can feel irritating?’. Furthermore, while working with children in thinking about the conditions of possibility for safer peer cultures, one child wrote in their statement that ‘It is important that I am able to tell adults things’; and ‘Did you know that at school everyone should be taught about friendships?’. The student’s expressions suggest that too often they have to deal with these matters alone and that these are issues that should hold a firm place in sexuality education.

The embarrassment of being interested or not interested in crushes may be linked to the view that romantic feelings are sensitive, private issues, as well as their ambivalent role for pre-teen children. Because many pre-teens experience romantic and sexual feelings and are fed sexually toned media content, but are simultaneously commonly regarded as innocent children free from sexuality, they may feel confusion regarding the kinds of relations they are supposed to have and how they should relate to expectations related to their age. Age appropriateness related to pre-teen romantic relationships divides pre-teen children, as we noted while talking about dating with fourteen 11-year-old girls during one of our workshops:

Researcher: ‘Many of you have said that there is something embarrassing about dating, so what is embarrassing about it?’

Silja: ‘‘Cause they are not adults’.

Maisa: ‘No, it is embarrassing because they have to tell adults’.

Silja: ‘I think that it is OK to like someone if you are underaged, but dating is more like an adult thing in the secondary level’.

Kreta: ‘Upper grades in basic education or high school’.

Silja: ‘So that you are an adult’.

Milla: ‘Teenager!’

This dialogue captures how pre-teens have various understandings of the kinds of relations they are supposed to have, and how they should relate to expectations connected to age. It offers an example of how students negotiate with age and normative discourses about what is expected from children, pre-teens, teenagers and adults in relation to being attracted to someone and dating. Common discourses on childhood sexuality that do not associate romantic and sexual feelings with childhood but with the teenage years (Bialystok 2018; Robinson 2013) may produce confusion in pre-teen children regarding how to explore and express their romantic and sexual aspirations in their lives.

Attitudes towards age appropriateness and corporeal and sexual expression are substantive at the threshold of childhood and youth. While working with the children in Friendship workshops over the years, pre-teens have expressed how the pressure to participate in romantic and sexual activities increases as the teenage years approach. The diverse opinions and approaches preteens have start to gradually divide them into separate groups which affect their friendships and possibilities of belonging. This was visible, for example, in one of the workshops where a group of 11-year-old children described to us how playing a game in which boys tied girls up with skipping ropes during a school break separated the pre-teens into those who wanted to play the game and those who did not. Pre-teens also stated how everyday things, such as wearing different kinds of pants to school enabled alternative activities, such as sexually toned games or playing in the snow with younger children. One of the children shared how ‘being different kind of depends on whether you’re wearing winter pants or not. It’s like, the older you get, the more embarrassing it is to wear winter pants’.

Pre-teen expressions show how lived childhood in pre-teen cultures is not a fixed, on universal developmental stage characterised by non-sexuality and innocence, and understood as untainted by culture (Davies and Kenneally 2020; Robinson 2013), but normative discourses on age, gender, and sexual relations affect current pre-teens’ lives and create not only groupings, but also tensions and divisions between them. The traditional understanding of an innocent, responsibility-free child does not take into account the sexually toned activities that are a part of pre-teen children’s peer relations, which also include harassment, exclusion and violence (Huuki, Kyrölä, and Pihkala 2021).

Navigating normative sexuality and gender discourses and demanding diversity

In our workshops, pre-teens actively challenged expectations of normative gender behaviour and heterosexuality, even if heteronormativity flourished in their practices and stories. On one occasion, a group of pre-teens watched Kisstories, a series of animation produced in one of our collaborative projects (www.fire-collective.com). The non-gender-specific characters (germs) kissing in the film evoked loud comments from viewers:

Sonja: ‘One of them kissed the other one, and then the one kissed back. Then they kissed each other’.

Silja: ‘But they were germs’.

Researcher: ‘Did everyone like those kisses?’

Many: ‘No!’

Sonja: ‘One of them was angry when the wrong girl or boy kissed them, and then this was like a wrong person’.

Researcher: ‘How can one be a wrong person?’

Sonja: ‘The way that they did not like it, and they got angry’.

Silja: ‘How do you know that boys were boys or girls were girls when they were all alike?’

Sonja: ‘But I said that – girl or boy’.

Here, the non-gender-specific characters were both questioned and negotiated. Silja challenged the gendering, but Sonja argued that she had used the word ‘or’ between girl and boy to underscore that she was not aiming to gender them. The articulations of pre-teen imaginations and embodiments of gender diversity tend to be fluid and transgressive (Bragg et al. 2018). However, in this instance, a discussion about the video, which had deliberately been made genderless, turned into a discussion on two gendered options, thus showing how pre-teen children educate themselves to question gendering and norms related to gender and sexuality.

In their political expressions, some of the pre-teens questioned gender stereotypes and gender normative expectations and called for more flexibility in becoming a gendered being. For example, given the opportunity to write down their hopes of being able to express boyhood in transgressive ways and to challenge normative ideals of masculinity, some preteens stated: ‘Boys can wear make-up’ and ‘Boys, too, can cry’. Similarly, they questioned the rigid notions of girlhood: ‘Did you know that girls can be strong and carry heavy things?’. It was intriguing how, in many of their political expressions, the socio-material power of hobbies, clothes and personal interests came up as important factors in enabling a wide variety of gender expression: ‘I think it is irritating when you cannot dress the way you want. It would be nice to be able to dress the way you want. I hope that you do not need to be the same as others’.

While some children felt they did not fit into normative expectations of gender and sexuality, others defined themselves as non-binary or non-heterosexual. When we addressed children’s hopes in relation to gender and sexuality and asked them to write down their statements, the expressions brought to the fore the importance of awareness-raising on diversity issues as well as the hope that no one would be excluded based on their gender or sexuality: ‘Don’t turn your back on someone based on their sexual orientation’. Instead of more specific LGBTIAQ+ terminology, gender and sexuality diversity were usually expressed in the form of ‘boys can like boys’ or ‘girls can be boyish’. Nevertheless, some participants also used vocabulary that was not taught in school, such as ‘non-binary’ or ‘dead-names’. In pre-teen political expressions, normative heterosexuality was questioned not only at a general level, but also in relation to romantic relationships and feelings: ‘I would hope that everyone can like whoever they like, no matter what gender’ and ‘Remember that girls can like boys, but also girls – and the same for boys!’. Written expressions also showed recognition of the cramped normativities that limit friendships. Both the heterosexualisation and homosexualisation of children’s relationships were frequently raised themes that the children wished for change: ‘Girls and boys can be friends, and it does not immediately mean a crush’ and ‘I hope that they would not be called a lesbian or gay if a girl is hugging another girl, or a boy is hugging a boy’.

As mentioned in the previous section, pre-teens question the pressure to be interested in each other sexually or romantically. However, in the Friendship Workshops pre-teenagers hardly ever talked about this as asexuality or aromanticism. Asexuality was typically reserved for adults as a category and a self-definition related to a non-normative choice. Similar to homosexuality in the teenage years in earlier decades (e.g. pre-2000), non-interest in romantic or sexual relationships is seen as a passing phase for pre-teenagers. Our experience with children suggests that this typical thinking about pre-teen asexuality or non-sexuality does not respond to pre-teenage children’s needs, which require their experiences to be taken seriously and the pressures they face considered relevant, even if the opinions may change over time.

Pre-teen children’s political expressions clearly indicate that they are not empty vessels or blank canvases untainted by culture (Bühler-Niederberger 2015) when it comes to sexuality and gender diversity. Rather, they are active navigators in the stormy sea of normative understandings, questionable discourses, new possibilities, lust, fear and other feelings, diverse relationships and hierarchies, options and divisions, and other peer cultural aspects related to age, gender and sexuality. Exploring these topics with children is not seen as necessary, and on the rare occasion they are addressed, they are approached from the perspective and for the purpose of the future instead of children’s lived and experienced present (see Davies and Kenneally 2020; Robinson, Smith, and Davies 2017).

Navigating pre-teen gender and sexuality co-productively

Gender and sexual diversity, inclusion and belonging are important and acute issues for most pre-teen children. These themes travelled to the children’s statements, which transformed from troubling peer experiences into political expression during the workshop activities: ‘It is important to me that the adults in school not assume students’ genders because there are more than two of them, and not everyone dares to come out’. ‘I don’t want anybody to be discriminated against, left alone, or bullied. Remember that no one should be harassed’.

Children’s hopes and the experiences they stem from remind us how pre-teen lives are entangled with wider cultural and media representations and terrains that pre-teens engage with in order to construct their gendered and sexual subjectivities and cultures. This happens in ways that transgress adults’ knowledge and perceptions of pre-teen lives and thus contests the oppositional positions of the ‘unknowing child’ and ‘knowing adult’ on offer (Robinson 2008). To navigate in the mix of these sometimes contradictory contemporary landscapes that pre-teen children are already a part of, the protectionist assumption of a child untainted by culture offers a poor starting point for advancing sexuality education (Bühler-Niederberger 2015). Instead, pre-teen children’s experiences echo the need for educators to be involved in creating safe, inclusive and equal environments together with pre-teen children and helping them gain tools and practices to explore, address and solve issues related to gender and sexuality in an ethically sustainable, affirmative manner which supports health and wellbeing.

Acknowledging the politics of the pre-teen age in developing sexuality education requires affirmative pedagogies that are situated in and acknowledge the ‘affective landscape of sexuality education’ (Coll, O’Sullivan, and Enright 2018). While sexuality-related topics are increasingly important in pre-teen lives, when discussing these topics with children, many of the subjects that really matter to them get easily paired with jokes, tense giggles and nervous glances, and are blunted by shame, embarrassment and the lack of language and history for both children and adults to address these issues. In our experience, particularly boys – often those who invest in the ways of relating that reinforce dominance and oppression – seem to find it difficult to take part in discussions of gender and sexuality in pre-teen peer relations. Educators may also easily ‘carry’ the normative expectations of professionalism, such as ‘being ready’, and the pressure to learn which facts to teach and how to teach them truthfully (Phelan 2011). This is demanding, especially if teachers have not been taught about diverse genders (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma 2021) and sexualities and how to talk about sexuality-related issues such as masturbation or sexual pleasure or relationships, with pre-teen children.

In the Friendship Workshops, the creative arts-based methods (Pihkala and Huuki 2022; Huuki, Kyrölä, and Pihkala 2021) we employed afforded generative, slower affirmative spaces for working through the sensitivities related to exploring gender and sexuality. Working creatively – through varied modalities, gradually and incrementally – enabled us to evade some of the pitfalls of normative sexuality education practices that produce silence and leave topics of relevance to pre-teens unaddressed. It also allowed us and the children to begin to explore those experiences and possibilities for gender and sexuality that had previously been difficult or impossible to address. Based on our experiences, we see creative methods as promising in that they offer routes to disrupt the insulated figures of adult educators and child students and to create co-productive spaces in which rethinking what matters in pre-teens’ gendered and sexual lives is approached with careful curiosity together with children.

Conclusions regarding sexuality education

How then can sexuality education be developed for pre-teenagers based on our analysis and reflections? While we have considered the topic from the point of view of the Finnish context, we suggest that our findings could be applied elsewhere, taking into account the local context. We do acknowledge that our points are mainly aimed at teachers; however, the state, local governments, and others responsible for organising education and teacher education should ideally make it possible for teachers to develop sexuality education in schools. Accordingly, we propose the following points for further consideration.

First, it is important to recognise the diversity of pre-teenagers. They come from diverse backgrounds and families, they are diverse in gender and sexuality as well as many other, possibly intersecting, respects. They have varied understandings of age, gender and sexuality as well as opinions on the norms and practices around age, gender and sexuality. This diversity offers a starting point for planning sexuality education and should be recognised within it. Teachers’ curiosity and interest in how pre-teens navigate age, gender, and sexuality is a prerequisite for relevant sexuality education.

Second, heteronormativity should be questioned as part of the teaching and interactions between teachers and students, and pre-teens should be taught how to actively challenge heteronormative practices in their peer interactions as well as in school and on social media – or indeed when using any cultural products. Pre-teens are part of the cultures around them and are active users, interpreters and creators of cultural products. They therefore need tools to tackle the problematic aspects of culture and prevent heteronormativity.

Third, the pre-teenage years should be seen as a specific period, and sexuality education should focus on the aspects and issues that are relevant to pre-teens in their lives in their current contexts instead of only addressing e future needs. It is relevant to ask pre-teens what they need now. Age appropriateness should mean that this is applied with the aim of developing better quality sexuality education.

Fourth, one key theme for pre-teens is the need to discuss norms, practices and abuses of power in pre-teen relationships, whether they be friendships, dating or crushes. Children’s asexuality or disinterest in dating or sex should also be respected and not treated as an automatic passing phase but as a current reality. Pre-teens should have access to relevant information about masturbation, sexual activities and key issues such as respect to develop successful and safe relationships with one another, whether these be friendships or romantic/sexual relationships.

Fifth, pre-teen children need adults to provide them with safety and protection from violence. Educational authorities should make sure that anti-violence/harassment programmes include the prevention of homophobia, transphobia and racism among other issues. The aims and values of gender and sexuality education and respect for diversity should inform all school practices and not only be mentioned as topics within official subject lessons. Pre-teens should be understood as active agents who take part in the creation of their peer and other cultures, but it is the responsibility of adults to ensure that this agency is given space by developing sexuality education.

The work reported in this paper derives from a growing acknowledgement of children as knowledge holders and the navigators of pre-teenage gender, sexuality and diversity on the one hand, and the limited tools and practices to engage children as co-producers of sexuality education on the other. The creative arts-based methods underpinning our work with pre-teenage children offer promising ways to challenge existing constricting binaries and divisions and instead help us tap into matters of significance in pre-teenage lives as a starting point for making sexuality education matter.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data supporting the results and analyses presented in this paper are kept securely at the University of Oulu. Due to the sensitive nature of the research, none of the supporting data are available.

Additional information

Funding

This work derives from two ongoing research projects: “Arts and research-activism for addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures” (2019-2023) and “Intervening in sexual harassment in primary school: how arts and research activism matter” (2022-2025)‘ supported by the Academy of Finland under grant number 322 612 and with University of Oulu Eudaimonia Institute Spearhead funding.