Conference Agenda

In recent years there has been a swell of praxis experimenting with cultivating methodological and pedagogical approaches to working with children, young people, parents and teachers as key stakeholders (Allen 2018; Gilbert et al 2018; Quinlivan 2018; Renold et al 2021) in ways that open up relationships and sexuality education (RSE) to its ‘more than’ (Manning 2013). This symposium will bring together a collective of international educational researchers who are pushing the boundaries of how critical educational praxis might attune to the diversity of children, young people, parents and teachers’ contemporary gender and sexuality becomings (Davies et al, 2021; Neary, 2022; Ollis et al, 2020;Renold, 2019; Robinson et al, 2023). In dialogue with feminist, queer, trans, new materialist and posthuman theories, this symposium seeks to diversify thinking about the transformative potentials of RSE. In doing so, it offers a collection of critical, creative and co-produced encounters with what more RSE related research and praxis might do, be and become across diversified educational contexts and societies.

The concept of ‘age-appropriateness’ is an arbitrary signifier and yet it commands a powerful common-sense appeal (McClelland & Hunter, 2013) in governing the shape and content of sexuality education. The visibility of LGBTQI+ lives in primary schools is deeply impacted by the ways in which ‘age-appropriateness’ and ‘childhood innocence’ are mobilised; very often resulting in silence and delay (Robinson, 2013; Neary & Rasmussen, 2020; Stockton, 2009). The concept of ‘age-appropriateness’ becomes entangled too with moral panics about ‘promoting’ LGBTQI+ lives, or children being somehow ‘recruited’ to identify as LGBTQI+ (Gray et al. 2021; DePalma & Atkinson, 2010). This paper draws on a study with the parents of eleven trans and gender diverse children (then aged between 5 and 13) conducted in 2017, as well as a follow-up study conducted with the same cohort of parents and children in 2022. This paper explores how the politics of age and agency intersect and become intensified as trans and gender diverse children and their parents navigate and make decisions about their bodies, lives and everyday worlds. These stories of trans and gender diverse children — laden as they are with tensions and ambivalences— are an arresting invitation to adults to attend closely to the stories of children themselves in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education across contexts

DePalma, R., & Atkinson, E. (2010). The nature of institutional heteronormativity in primary schools and practice-based responses. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1669-1676. Gray, E., Reimers, E., & Bengtsson, J. (2021). The boy in a dress: A spectre for our times. Sexualities, 24(1-2), 176-190. McClelland, S. I., & Hunter, L. E. (2013). Bodies that are always out of line: a closer look at “Age Appropriate Sexuality”. In The moral panics of sexuality (pp. 59-76). Palgrave Macmillan, London. Neary, A., & Rasmussen, M. L. (2020). Marriage Equality Time: Entanglements of sexual progress and childhood innocence in Irish primary schools. Sexualities, 23(5-6), 898-916. Robinson, K. H. (2013). Innocence, knowledge and the construction of childhood: The contradictory nature of sexuality and censorship in children’s contemporary lives. Routledge. Stockton, K. B. (2009). The queer child, or growing sideways in the twentieth century. Duke University Press.

Comprehensive Sexuality and Relationships (CSR) education provides information foundational to children’s and young people’s sexual health literacy, wellbeing, and sexual citizenship. However, CSR is fundamentally a political field that is highly regulated by socio-cultural discourses of childhood and sexuality that underpin perceptions of ‘age-appropriate’ knowledge for children and young people. CSR aimed at children and young people is often framed within cisgender-heteronormative discourses and, therefore, does not meet the complex needs of trans and gender diverse (TGD) young people. Lack of access to relevant, inclusive, and high-quality CSR particularly impacts TGD children and young people who may be making significant decisions about their fertility and reproductive futures. This presentation draws on Australian pilot research conducted with TGD children and young people (aged 7-12) and their parents/carers, which is on-going, as well as research with healthcare professionals working with TGD young people and their families. In this presentation, we explore parents’ concerns about inclusive sexuality education in the school setting; pedagogical practices in this area; young people’s perceptions of their reproductive lives; and the importance of TGD young people’s access to quality comprehensive sexuality education, inclusive of fertility education, to their decision-making. Finally, the implications for educators and schools are addressed.

Davies, C. Elder, CV., Riggs, D.W., Robinson, K.H. (2021). The importance of informed fertility counselling for trans young people. The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, correspondence, Sep; 5(9):e36-e37. Davies, C., Robinson, K.H., Metcalf, A., Ivory, K., Mooney-Somers, J., Race, K., Skinner, S.R. (2021). Australians of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, in T. Dune, K. McLeod, R. Williams (Eds.), Culture, Diversity and Health in Australia: Towards Culturally Safe Health Care, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, London, UK, 213-231. European Expert Group on Sexuality Education (2016) Sexuality Education – what is it? Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 16 (4) Lai, T.C., McDougall, R., Feldman, D., Elder, C., Pang, K. (2020) Fertility Counseling for Transgender Adolescents: A Review, Journal of Adolescent Health, 66: 658-665. Robinson, K.H., Davies, C., Ussher, J.M. & Sinner R. (2023) Holistic sexuality education and fertility counselling for trans children and young people. In Riggs, D., Ussher, J.M., Robinson, K.H. & Rosenberg, S. (Eds). 2023) Trans Reproductive and Sexual Health: Justice, Embodiment and Agency. London: Routledge. Shannon, B. (2022). Sex(uality) Education for Tran and Gender Diverse Youth in Australia. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

This paper builds upon critical and creative engagements with the politics and praxis of ‘youth voice’ (Mayes 2023) in sexuality education research (Quinlivan 2018; Ollis et al. 2022). It shares the methodological journey of an exploratory research project where creative methods were co-produced to invite a diversity of young people (aged 11-18) to be the critics and architects of what and how they are learning about relationships, sex and sexuality. Over 120 young people, across 6 schools and 2 youth groups in England, Wales and Scotland, participated in the making of ‘darta’ (arts-based data, Renold 2018). We follow this ‘darta’, from the field, and into a suite of creative research outputs: a film, poetry and darta ‘calling-cards’. Drawing on the concept of ‘youth voice assemblages’ to capture the material agency of ‘voice’, we explore how this empirical arts-praxis enabled us to attune to, animate and amplify the complex ways in which young people surface and share what matters to them on a wide range of topics (e.g. from periods and porn to gender and sexual diversity). In a sexuality education context which too often simplifies and silences young people’s feelings, views and experiences, we argue that a creative ontology of ‘youth voice’ is an ethical and political imperative for a more relevant, responsive and ethical sexuality and relationships education to come.

Mayes, E. (2023). Politics of Voice in Education: Reforming Schools After Deleuze and Guattari. Edinburgh University Press. Ollis, D., Coll, L., Harrison, L. and Johnson, B., 2022. Pedagogies of possibility for negotiating sexuality education with young people. Emerald Group Publishing. Quinlivan, K. (2018). Contemporary Issus in Sexuality Education for Young People. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Renold, E. (2018) ‘Feel what I feel’: Making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (1), 37-55.

Researchers have persistently highlighted the need for relationships and sexuality education (RSE) to reorient itself to the priorities of young people (Quinlivan 2018; Allen & Rasmussen 2017). Central to this, is an increased recognition that young people are invested in RSE futures that they co-create and often inherit (Coll et al, 2020; Renold 2018; Renold et al, 2021). This paper is derived from a larger three-year participatory action oriented project, undertaken in four secondary schools across Australia, which engaged over 100 students as co-researchers (aged 15–19) in understanding, critiquing and transforming sexuality and relationships education (Ollis et al 2022). This paper will focus on an activist orientated research engagement with one urban secondary school’s Feminist collective (Fem Co) who acted as critical friends and pedagogical consultants on the larger project. This paper explores what RSE and educational contexts more broadly might learn from student-led creative activism and the ways in which students are already working towards shared concerns for the transformation of futures. Drawing on queer and affect theory, this paper considers what a critical mode of hope might offer for a rethinking of transformative orientated pedagogies and co-constructed forms of RSE curricula. Part of the function of this paper is to look beyond what is broken and to diversify the stories we hear about young people in RSE orientated research in education.

Allen, L. and Rasmussen, M. L. (eds.) (2017). The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Bragg, S., Renold, E., Ringrose, J., and Jackson, C. (2018). ‘More than boy, girl, male, female’: exploring young people’s views on gender diversity within and beyond school contexts. Sex education, 18 (4), 420-434. Ollis, D., Coll, L., Harrison, L. and Johnson, B., 2022. Pedagogies of possibility for negotiating sexuality education with young people. Emerald Group Publishing. Quinlivan, K. (2018). Contemporary Issus in Sexuality Education for Young People. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Renold, E. (2018) ‘Feel what I feel’: Making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (1), 37-55. Renold, EJ., Ashton, M. & McGeeney, E. (2021) What if?: becoming response-able with the making and mattering of a new relationships and sexuality education curriculum, Professional Development in Education, 47:2-3, 538-555.