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Is it ethical to want students to become non-queerphobic as an outcome of our teaching? This question is situated within thinking about teaching for social justice. It takes an event where a student challenges a course's queer pedagogy and thinks with it to expose 'the inherent paradox of education'. This is the notion that in its desires for individual and social transformation, education presumes to know how students should behave and how the world should be. The paper considers how educators might approach this paradox more ethically. It argues for a reconceptualisation of education as an 'uncertain event' that involves approaching teaching without preconceived agendas about what educational encounters will eventuate. It also involves a reconfiguration of ethics and education, where ethics is understood as implied rather than applied. This rearrangement invites educators to engage in a sensible orientation to teaching where attention is paid to its nuances, textures and complexities.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterosexuality as preferred and acceptable is normalized by heteronormativity, placing homosexuality as abnormal. New Zealand secondary schools might be thought of as heteronormative spaces. The paper analyzes heteronormalizing education processes that emphasize heterosexuality and regard homosexuality as deviance. Focus group discussions with same-sex attracted and heterosexual 16- to 20-year olds unravel the power of heteronormativity and some obstacles of implementing classroom strategies to oppose it.

This paper is interested in thinking more about sexuality education at school. As such, it is concerned with a mundane and unacknowledged feature of the sexuality classroom - the mapping of movement. While human movement is a familiar focus of educational research, the movement of things is not. With reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity, the paper maps human-non-human movements and characterises these as a sexual choreography of schooling. Instead of asking what does movement mean or reveal about sexuality education, I attend to the event movement inaugurates. Predominantly theoretical, the paper weaves together ideas from conventionally disparate disciplinary fields. These include Edensor’s concept of rhythm from geography, Eggermont’s notion of the choreography of schooling from education, and Barad’s spacetimemattering from quantum physics. This theorisation enables a recognition of movement as a force in human-non-human classroom intra-actions implicated in the becoming of sexuality education as event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the limits of queer pedagogy's thought [Britzman, D. (1995). Is there a queer pedagogy or stop reading straight.Educational Theory,45(2), 151–165]? This question is considered in relation to how queer pedagogy unfolds in a first-year university course entitledLearning Sexualities. Examples of how queer pedagogy might operate in university courses on sexuality within the discipline of education are non-existent. This discussion subsequently illuminates one example, not as a template to follow, but as a means of glimpsing something which is characteristically elusive and unrecognisable. Here, the paper joins a conversation about queer research, initiated by Talburt and Rasmussen [(2010). ‘After queer’ tendencies in queer research.International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,23(1), 1–14] about ‘after-queer’ tendencies, extending it to teaching in higher education. This is an examination concerned with interrogating queer theory's limits. It attempts a queering of queer pedagogy itself. Not only in terms of what is possible for it to achieve in heteronormative [Warner, M. (1993).Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press] institutions like universities, but also, in relation to deciphering the edges of how queer pedagogy comes to know itself. The author's experiences of teaching theLearning Sexualitiescourse are employed as a way of illuminating some of these boundaries. One of these is identified as student ‘discomfort', a feeling that is antithetical to an institutional setting which demands and rewards student ‘satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’ in courses. This work is undertaken in the spirit of Kumashiro's [(2002).Troubling education: Queer activism and antioppressive pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer] project of ‘rethinking practices’ and ‘looking for new insights’ in our teaching in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a discussion of Deleuze's theorization of concepts, Todd May asks “what can a concept do with that which cannot be identified?” Or to put it another way, May writes – “A concept is a way of addressing the difference that lies beneath the identities we experience.” This is not to say that identities, concepts, and experiences are linked in particular ways. The possibility of extending what a concept can do is also brought under scrutiny by Ann Burlein, who draws on the work of Elizabeth Wilson to argue “Feminism needs to engage with scientific authority not simply at those sites where it [science] takes women as its objects, but also in the neutral zones, in those places where feminism appears to have no place or political purchase.” “Why not feminist critiques of the liver or the stomach, she asks?” Such styles of thought are the inspiration for this paper. We argue that queer concepts in education should not stop at places where education takes queer bodies as its objects, but that queer concepts have an important role to play in places where, at first glance, they appear to have no place or purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might we understand young men’s sexual embodiment at school? This article is concerned with the body as a site for the intersection of masculinities and sexualities at school. In a bid to contribute to existing narrative analyses of young men’s sexualities in educational contexts, this research employs visual methods in order to “picture” these intersections. Findings are drawn from an exploratory study in two secondary schools, where photo diaries and photo elicitation were undertaken with twenty-two students aged sixteen to eighteen years. It is argued that, the idea of boys as “sexy bodies,” that is, bodies that are experienced and viewed as sexual, is missing. This omission occurs in two ways; as a focus for school-based research and as an understanding of young men’s schooled experience. Through an analysis of enfleshed bodies captured by photo methods, the ways in which male sexuality is corporeally manifested as active, desiring, heteronormative and “sexy” are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea that pleasure might form a part of sexuality education is no longer a ‘new’ idea in the field of sexuality studies. In this paper we examine how originally conceived notions of pleasure have been ‘put to work’ and theoretically ‘taken up’ in relation to sexuality and education. It is our contention that because of the nature of discourse and varying cultural and political contexts, pleasure has been operationalised in ways we did not intend or foresee. Throughout this discussion we seek to discern the discursive limits of visions of pleasure to illuminate their normalising potential. Drawing on Foucault's thoughts about pleasure as having ‘no passport’ and queer theoretical understandings of this concept, we argue for a re-conceptualisation of the potential of pleasure in sexuality education. In particular we identify the need for wedging open spaces for the possibility of ethical pleasures, in forms that are not heteronormatively pre-conceived or mandatory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Visual methods are often marginalised in educational research and have not been employed to collect information about sexuality at school. This paper examines the viability and effectiveness of conducting research about the 'sexual cultures' of schools in New Zealand using photo-diaries and photo-elicitation. 'Effectiveness' is judged by what the visual methodologies literature purports are the benefits of these methods. These advantages include providing participants with greater autonomy over what and how data is collected. The paper argues it is feasible to employ visual methods to research sexuality in schools. Such methods offer participants alternative means of recounting their stories, can help illuminate an esoteric object of investigation like 'sexual cultures' and engage participants less likely to volunteer for sexuality research. The use of visual methods is not without challenges however. Securing ethics approval and school participation along with problems with camera retrieval and protecting participant agency were some difficulties encountered in the current study. For those wishing to pursue less conventional research methodologies in educational settings, this discussion highlights potential benefits and struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been recognized that to be effective, sexuality education must meet the needs and interests of young people (Aggleton and Campbell, 2000). However, this acknowledgement has often manifested in adults ultimately determining what young people's needs and interests are. This article focuses on what senior school students determine as important and relevant programme content from focus group and survey data. Participants' suggestions provide a critique of current sexuality education provision that is clinical, de-eroticized and didactic. Young people's calls for content about emotions in relationships, teenage parenthood, abortion and how to make sexual activity pleasurable offer insights into how they understand themselves as sexual subjects. Student responses position them as having the right to make their own decisions about sexual activity and to access knowledge that will enable their engagement in relationships that are physically and emotionally pleasurable. This positioning sits in conflict with the preferred non-sexual identity young people are offered by the official culture of many schools (Allen, 2007). It is proposed that this tension has implications for how programmes constitute student sexuality and their effectiveness in empowering young people to view their sexuality positively and make positive sexual decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are young women and men's preferences for sexuality education content poles apart? This article explores gender differences in senior school students' suggestions for issues sexuality education should cover. Findings are analysed in relation to debate about mixed and single sex classrooms and boys' perceived disinterest in lessons. It is argued that young women and men's content preferences were largely similar on items that a majority selected for inclusion. Topics less than half of participants named revealed a greater number of gender differences. Employing theoretical insights from feminist post-structuralism, responses are also examined for how they position young people as sexual subjects and whether these conform to or deviate from perceptions of 'conventional heterosexualities'. This examination enables an understanding of how young people view themselves as sexual and whether this matches their constitution within sexuality programmes. The implications of students' content preferences and the way these position them as sexual subjects are considered for the possibilities they present for programme design and delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with some of the theoretical and methodological complexities of collecting young people's preferences for sexuality education content and using them to inform educational practice. Data are drawn from focus groups and questionnaires undertaken by 16-19-year-olds. Participants' suggestions often reflect dominant discourses of sexuality circulating in wider society, providing insight into social norms and cultural contexts in which they live. Suggestions do not reflect dominant discourses in any simple way, but involve a complex interplay of these and subordinate meanings of sexuality. When working within a methodological framework that values and centres young people's perspectives, these proposals can be problematic. As dominant discourses of sexuality often reinforce social inequalities, programme implementation of young people's suggestions may perpetuate these. How to reconcile a commitment to a methodological paradigm that prioritises young people's perspectives with the creation of sexuality education which promotes social justice is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the sexually explicit comments and references to pornography in young men's answers to a survey about sexuality education. Instead of viewing these remarks as simply impertinent and therefore discountable, I argue that they offer insights into the constitution of masculine identity and an erotic deficit in sexuality education. Many of these comments make requests for the inclusion of enfleshed (female) bodies in sexuality programmes and the use of pornographic materials (i.e. videos, magazines). These responses can be seen to represent a challenge to school authority in the way they are laden with “shock” value and push at the discursive limits of “sexual respectability”. In a school environment that seeks to deny the sexual and contain student sexuality, these statements symbolise an assertion of young men's sexual agency. Young men's remarks also offer a critique of sexuality education that is de-eroticised and which denies them as positive and legitimate sexual subjects. The implications of these comments for how sexuality education might be conceptualised are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do young people conceptualise ‘effective’ sexuality education? This paper explores 16‐year‐old to 19‐year‐old New Zealanders' vision of effective sexuality education as it emerges in answers to a survey question about improving programmes at secondary school. Young people's responses suggest that their view of what makes sexuality education effective may diverge from those who perceive a reduction in sexually transmissible infections and unplanned pregnancy as ultimate markers of effectiveness. Participants in this study referred to other criteria around aspects of classroom structure, curriculum content and teacher competency as rendering programmes effective. Through their comments young people are positioned more positively and legitimately as sexual subjects than they are typically constituted in programmes that emphasise reducing negative outcomes of sexual activity. It is proposed that giving more weight to young people's view of effective sexuality education, and the constitution of student sexuality this implies, could be beneficial to their sexual health and well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tradition of predominately feminist literature has revealed that there is a 'missing discourse of desire' in many sex education programmes. Building on this work, this article explores the gendered effects of this de-eroticized and clinical form of education. It is argued that young women and men's (hetero)sexual subjectivities are differentially affected by the invisibility of desire and pleasure in this curriculum. To offer young women a sense of personal empowerment and entitlement, and young men a broader range of (hetero)sexual subjectivities, it is proposed that sex education include a discourse of erotics. This would comprise more than an acknowledgement of desire and pleasure and incorporate the embodied practicalities of these experiences. As a means of developing this discourse within sexuality programmes, empirical evidence of 17- to 19-year-olds' experiences of desire and pleasure are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]