The Challenges And Consequences Of Implementing Comprehensive Sexuality Education Curriculum In South Korea

Author(s):

Ji Soo Lee(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Poster

Session Information

ERG SES D 03, Interactive Poster Session

Poster Session

Time:

2017-08-21

13:30-15:00

Room:

W2.06

Chair:

Sabine Krause

Contribution

Comprehensive sexuality education(CSE) is a new paradigm of sexuality education worldwide. CSE aims to encourage youth to maintain their sexual health and empower them to promote gender equality(Braeken and Cardinal, 2008). However, in South Korean schools, sexuality education has majorly focused on biological issues, and considered as comparatively subsidiary compared to other subjects such as English and Mathematics. In this situation, sexuality educators trained from Sexuality education center for youth, women’s associations, and gender equality center began to promote CSE in schools. This study investigates educational practices by sexuality educators from those agencies. Making use of sexuality educators’ interview data and curricular documents, it explores comprehensive sexuality education in schools. It also reveals what educators think of effects of the CSE along with challenges that they face in practice.

Comprehensive sexuality education is a new approach in sexuality education which has been promoted by United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA), and International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF). Different from youth sexuality education paradigms which emphasized biological sex knowledge, morality, and danger in youth sexuality, CSE emphasizes the matter of gender and sexual rights of teenagers and provides comprehensive information about sex, gender, and sexuality to youth(Haberland and Rogow, 2014). IPPF(2010) also provides criteria for CSE by mentioning “Seven Essential Components of Comprehensive Sexuality Education” such as Gender, Sexual and reproductive health and HIV, Sexual rights and sexual citizenship, Pleasure, Violence, Diversity and Relationship. In this vein, UNFPA(2014) specifies that CSE should have a gender- sensitive focus and basis in values and human rights, and provide thorough and accurate information about human rights, gender norms and power in relationships(UNFPA, 2014). In this aspect, CSE is often called as a critical sexuality education which promotes gender equality by revealing skewed sex, gender and sexuality system(Jones, 2011).

Diverse studies revealed that South Korea is a society where gender inequality is a serious issue(Kim, 2012; World Economic Forum, 2015). For example, according to the 2015 Global Gender Gap Report written by World Economic Forum, South Korea ranked 115th out of 145 countries. South Korea is also known as a sexually conservative country where queers are deemed as invisible and often publicly abhorred. To cope with these issues, Ministry of education strengthened school sexuality education and made 15 hours of it mandatory by law. However, since there were no specific guidelines about how to enforce sexuality education, school nurses have focused on biological sex education fragmentarily and teachers from other subjects such as Korean literature and Science who are not professional sexuality educators, have taught sexuality education.

Under this circumstance, Sexuality education center for youth, Women’s associations, and Gender equality center began to send sexuality educators who could promote CSE out to schools. According to Kim(2012), nearly 30% of middle and high school students were begun to be taught by these professional sexuality educators from 2012. This is a significant change in South Korea since it sets the new direction of sexuality education curriculum in South Korea. Moreover, this change also has a global implication, since it provides an opportunity to better understand CSE in a sexually conservative society.

The research questions are as follows: First, how sexuality educators practice CSE in middle and high schools? Second, what are the drawbacks and effects of CSE implemented in middle and high schools? With these research questions in mind, we explored the experiences of sexuality educators practicing comprehensive sexuality education(CSE) in South Korean schools by examining their curriculum document data and interview data.

Method

This paper used the qualitative case study as a research method by using document and interview data. We first searched for the institutions that train educators for CSE and from those, three agencies were selected: Sexuality education center for youth, Women’s associations and Gender equality center. First, Sexuality education center for youth is established by Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and Office of Education to supplement current school sexuality education and train instructors for CSE. Second, Women’s associations also train sexuality educators to make students discover the drawbacks of patriarchy prevalent in our society through sexuality education. Third, Gender equality center which is affiliated with Ministry of Gender equality and Family develops gender- sensitive curriculum material and educates sexuality educators to teach CSE in schools. Among them, we selected four research participants who have taught CSE for more than 5 years and have their deepest understanding upon CSE as cases. This study examined document data and interview data with these sexuality educators. First, we analyzed document data to examine how sexuality educators are implementing CSE in middle and high schools. After closely taking look at their curricular documents, and reflective journals, we found that most sexuality educators develop curriculum on their own by referring to diverse material sources such as TV drama, scholarly journals, and books. When analyzing these document data, we first worked together to develop criteria of CSE referring to the framework of IPPF(2010) and UNFPA(2014). After creating this standard, we examined what criteria of contents research participants cover from that standard. We then, conducted initial analysis to examine the allied or contrasting features between participants in interpreting data and completed cross-checking process to enhance the validity of the analysis. To understand the experiences of the sexuality educators implementing CSE, we conducted in-depth interviews with them in addition to document analysis. Interview questions included how students responded to CSE, what were the challenges educators faced while implementing CSE in schools. All of the interviews were recorded under consent of the participants. Interviews took nearly an hour and transcribed later on. In interpreting interview data, we carefully examined each interview data according to the research questions. We then compared interview data of the each participant with another to find out recurring features among them. After that, we cross-checked document and interview data analysis to assure validity and consistency of our interpretation of data(Merriam, 1998).

Expected Outcomes

In this study, we focused on how CSE is implemented in South Korean middle and high schools. Major findings demonstrate that sexuality educators who participated in the study covered most of the contents in the criteria for CSE from UNPFA(2014) and IPPF(2011). Among those, document analysis shows that most participants spent 80% of their time explaining the concepts of gender, sex, and sexuality and its connections to the violence and relationships in each class. However, they spent less than 10% of time dealing with sexually transmitted disease, HIV, and issues regarding sexual minorities in Korea. This reveals that sexuality education in Korea is still under the influence of heteronormativity instead of embracing diverse sexual orientations (Lee-mok, 2014). Throughout the interviews about effects of employing CSE in schools, most research participants responded that students began to tell their experiences living in a gender insensitive society and tried to find resolutions to unequal situations on gender focus after class. They mentioned that the female students were empowered to call verbal violence they received from boys ‘misogyny’ after CSE. Also, LGBTQ students were also enabled to share their agonies with sexuality educators and learned how to cope with homophobia. In the light of the challenges in implementing CSE, research participants mentioned that the treatment toward sexuality educators should be improved since they had to cope with the heavy workloads. Sometimes, they suffered from the intervention from schools by designating criteria of contents they should not mention in class such as topics about queer and sexual minorities. Due to this, several participants told that they felt like being censored. On the basis of these findings, this study has its global implication and expects to further develop and promote Comprehensive Sexuality Education(CSE) in South Korean schools.

References

Braeken, D., & Cardinal, M. (2008). Comprehensive Sexuality Education as a Means of Promoting Sexual Health. International Journal of Sexual Health, 20(1–2), 50–62. Haberland, N., & Rogow, D.(2014). Sexuality Education: Emerging Trends in Evidence and Practice. Journal of Adolescent Health, 56, 25-21. IPPF. (2010). IPPF Framework for Comprehensive Sexuality Education. UK: IPPF. Jones, T(2011). A Sexuality Education Discourses Framework: Conservative, Liberal, Critical and Postmodern. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 6, 133-175. Kim. Y., & Kim, D.(2012). Political issues upon Youth health on the gender sensitive perspective. Korean women’s development institute report. Lee-Mok, so hee. (2014). Gender-Sensitive Sex Education for the Youth in Korea. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 20(2), 173–184. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. UNFPA(2014). Operational guidance for comprehensive sexuality education. New York: United Nations Population Fund. World Economic Forum(2015). The Global Gender Gap Report 2015. http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/

Author Information

Ji Soo Lee (presenting / submitting)

Yonsei University

Education

Seoul

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