A feminist inquiry into Canadian pre-service teacher narratives on sex education and sexual violence prevention

This research uses feminist methodology to investigate the multi-contextual narratives of pre-service teachers in sex education when they were K-12 students, their emerging understandings of sex and sexual violence, and their experiences learning about prevention in undergraduate and teacher education. Participants experienced inadequate sex education in K-12 school, where they learned about sex and sexual violence through the margins of rather than the formal curriculum, leading to difficulty negotiating sexual ethics and developing sexual citizenship. Participants critically reflected on their own teachers’ discomfort with teaching about sex and addressing incidences of sexual violence, as well as on the absence of prevention education in the teacher education. They had limited understandings of sexual violence and expressed desire to learn more as they emerge into their teacher roles, to do better than their teachers did. Implications include the need for mandatory integration of prevention education throughout the teacher certification curriculum.