Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education pp 1–19Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction to The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education draws together a vibrant collection of writings from around the globe that highlight key debates and signal new developments in the field of critical sexuality education studies (Plummer 2008). A volume of over 900 pages and 32 contributions, involving 56 sexuality researchers, it is one of the first handbooks to attempt such an international overview focused specifically on sexuality education. Our aim has been to assemble contributions from a range of disciplinary fields, across a wide breadth of regional, national, and transnational contexts. We have sought to offer diverse and compelling accounts of how sexuality education is conceptualised, practised, politicised, regulated, struggled over, reconfigured, and hoped for. Imperative to this delineation of the field has been capturing the pulsating richness of the landscape of sexuality education research internationally.The handbook is structured into four parts, curated by leading scholars in the field of critical sexualities studies. The handbook is structured into four parts, curated by leading scholars in the field of critical sexualities studies; Global Assemblages of Sexuality Education (Part I), Sexual Cultures, Entertainment Media and Communication Technologies (Part II), Sexualities Education in Schools (Part II) and Re-animating what else sexuality education research can do, be and become (Part IV). Importantly, this handbook does not equate sexuality education with safer sex education; such an approach narrows the scope of the field. Instead, this text critically delineates the field to date, while sketching innovative conceptual and pedagogical possibilities for the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Anthropocentricism is a frame of thought that centres humans and human meaning-making as the sole constitutive force of our world. It places humans above other matter in reality, creating a hierarchy in which humans reign supreme (Fox and Alldred 2013).

References

  • Alldred, P., & David, M. (2007). Get real about sex: The politics and practice of sex education. London: McGraw-Hill Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, L. (2005). Sexual subjects: Young people, sexuality, and education. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Allen, L. (2011). Young people and sexuality education: Rethinking key debates. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Allen, L. (2012). Pleasure’s perils? Critically reflecting on pleasure’s inclusion in sexuality education. Sexualities, 15(3–4), 455–471.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2012). On touching—The inhuman that therefore I am. A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 25(3), 206–223.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bashford, A., & Strange, C. (2004). Public pedagogy: Sex education and mass communication in the mid-twentieth century. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13(1), 71–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Blaise, M. (2013). Activating micropolitical practices in the early years: (Re)assembling bodies and participant observations. In R. Coleman, & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 184–200). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Coole, D, & Frost, S (Eds.). (2010). New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics. London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeLanda, M. (2002). Intensive science and virtual philosophy. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. (2007). Eight years later: 1980 interview. Two regimes of madness: Texts and interviews 1975–1995 (trans: Hodges, A., & Taormina, M., pp. 175–180). Paris: Semiotext(e).

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, D. (1994). Challenging lesbian and gay inequalities in education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fields, J. (2008). Risky lessons: Sex education and social inequality. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox, N., & Alldred, P. (2013). The sexuality-assemblage: Desire, affect, anti-humanism. The Sociological Review, 61, 769–789.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, J. (2014). Sexuality in school: The limits of education. London: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Goodley, D., & Runswick-Cole, K. (2013). The body as disability and possibility: Theorizing the ‘leaking, lacking and excessive’ bodies of disabled children. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 15(1), 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haver, W. (1998). ‘Of mad men who practice invention to the brink of intelligibility’. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Queer theory in education (pp. 349–64). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Irvine, J. M. (2004). Talk about sex: The battles over sex education in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, A. E. (2010). Too early to talk about sex? Issues in creating culturally relevant sexuality education for preadolescent Black girls in the United States. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 7(2), 128–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, R. (1996). Sexual dissonances: Or the ‘impossibility’ of sexuality education. Curriculum studies, 4(2), 163–189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kehily, M. J. (2002). Sexuality, gender and schooling: Shifting agendas in social learning. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, N. (2013). The sex education debates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenz Taguchi, H., & Palmer, A. (2013). A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. Gender and Education, 25(6), 671–687.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lorimer, J. (2013). More-than-human visual analysis: Witnessing and evoking affect in human-nonhuman interactions. In R. Coleman, & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 61–78). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • MacLure, M. (2013a). Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post-qualitative methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658–667.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacLure, M. (2013b). Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In R. Coleman, & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 164–183). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, D. (2014). Queer reparations: Dialogue and the queer past of schooling. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(3), 347–360.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills, J. (2012). I should get married early: Culturally appropriate comprehensive sex education and the racialization of Somali masculinity. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 1(1), 5–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, J. P. (2009). Teaching sex: The shaping of adolescence in the 20th century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinar, W. F. (Ed.). (1998). Queer theory in education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plummer, K. (2008). Studying sexualities for a better world? Ten years of sexualities. Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society, 11(1/2), 7–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, M., & Allen, L. (2014). What a concept can do? Rethinking education’s queer assemblages. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.888846.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renold, E., & Ivinson, G. (2014). Horse-girl assemblages: Towards a post-human cartography of girls’ desire in an ex-mining valleys community. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–16. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/015963 06.2014.888841.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schroeder, E., & Kuriansky, J. (Eds.). (2009). Sexuality education: Past, present, and future. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sears, J. (Ed.). (1992). Sexuality and the curriculum: The politics and practices of sexuality education. New York: Teachers College Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taverner, W. J., Garrity, J., Selverstone, R., & Wilson, P. (2011). Touring the world of sexuality education—A review of sexuality education: Past, present, and future. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 6(2), 206–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trudell, B. N. (1993). Doing sex education: Gender politics and schooling. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D., & Armstrong, F. (2011). A politics beyond subjects: The affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling. Emotion, Space and Society, 4, 144–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Louisa Allen

  2. School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Mary Lou Rasmussen

Authors
  1. Louisa Allen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mary Lou Rasmussen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Louisa Allen

  2. School of Sociology Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Mary Lou Rasmussen

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Allen, L., Rasmussen, M.L. (2017). Introduction to The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. In: Allen, L., Rasmussen, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40032-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40033-8

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation