In Search of Critical Pedagogy in Sexuality Education: Visions, Imaginations, and Paradoxes

TLDR

Conservative pedagogies dominate school‑based sexuality education, with standards emphasizing risk knowledge and normative ideals, yet the article addresses teaching comprehensive sexuality education to diverse communities. The article argues that adopting critical pedagogy can challenge dominant authority, subordination, and hegemony in sexuality education, thereby expanding pedagogies and improving learning for diverse communities. The authors employ critical pedagogy, drawing on the Frankfurt school, Freire, Giroux, and Kincheloe, as a vehicle to expand existing teaching practices and enhance student learning in sexuality education.

Abstract

This article is about the purposes and the processes of teaching comprehensive sexuality education to diverse communities. We argue that establishing an educational response to addressing diversity in sexuality education involves challenging and interrupting current dominant forms of authority, subordination, and systems of hegemony prevalent in the teaching practices of this subject. We argue that critical pedagogy (influenced by the Frankfurt school of thought and developed by Freire 1974, 1973; Giroux 1988, 2003; and Kincheloe 2004) is a vehicle to explore and expand existing teaching pedagogies and cultural investments in sexuality education, as well as a way to contribute toward more effective teaching and student learning in this subject area. The turn to critical pedagogy in this article is an acknowledgement that the dilemmas of the secondary classroom and the questions of what becomes of sexual knowledge in that space are too big to ignore. Conservative pedagogies still reign in school-based sexuality education. Educational standards in this subject area are still strictly associated with risk knowledge (McWilliams 1996) and normative ideals of sex, sexuality, and gender are pervasive in the teaching practices of this subject (Allen 2007; Rasmussen 2006).