“Less of everything else, more of what sex is!”, Hilda stated frankly in an interview discussing their past sexuality education unit. Although the interview also revealed students to find teaching interesting, something was clearly missing. They expected more and different from what they had experienced in school sexuality education. This study is part of a four year long research project exploring Swedish school-based sexuality education in five secondary schools. In this paper we focus on teaching in one of the participating schools where teachers decided to address the 15 year old students’ questions about what sex might be. The aim of the study is to explore how the teaching of sex might be enacted in Swedish secondary sexuality education. 

Today, emphasis is placed in various documents about sexuality education, on the need to balance between risk and healthy perspectives (SKOLFS 2021:9, The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2018). Knowledge about condom use and dental dam can lead to a healthy perspective is perhaps given, but if a healthy perspective only becomes an unspoken possibility, the area can instead remain in the risk perspective about possible diseases. The Swedish Schools Inspectorates survey (2018) shows that schools tend to leave out the healthy perspective in sexuality education. Research pinpoints the need of sexuality education that addresses also subject areas such as physical pleasure and lust (McGreeney & Kehily 2016; Helbekkmo et al 2021) and sensuality (Allen 2020). Louisa Allen (2020) claims that instead of what we call the healthy perspective, sexuality education is characterised by a mechanical and instrumental view of the content, with a focus on risks. The tone in the media and partly also in curriculum is that if schools cannot provide alternatives, students’ source to learn how to have sex will be with the help of pornography online, which is regarded as a dangerous way. Accordingly, the risk perspective is once again overwhelming. Meanwhile there is a pronounced demand in Sweden to involve students’ views in teaching (Swedish National Agency for Education 2022). International research has also concluded that young people’s realities and challenges need to be met in sexuality education (Cense 2018). Nevertheless, Katheleen Quinlivan (2018) who has worked a long time in focus groups with students means that the possibility of sex education to become otherwise is pedagogically challenging. Teaching at schools is filled with expectations.

According to Sharon Todd (2016) school is enmeshed in the language of learning. She means that learning is a concept connected to “efficiency, behaviour and management”, insinuating that things we are to learn are already defined and with a specific purpose (2016 p. 621). Todd (2016, p. 622) further argues for a shift towards seeing education as engagement with uncertainty rather than “as a vehicle for skills management and training” in giving answers defined elsewhere than in educational situations. In Todd’s (2016, p. 623) account uncertainty is seen “as a valuable feature” for students’ unpredictable experiences of becoming, and not only becoming in the flesh but also in the unknown becoming of the future. Hence, learning is not about acquiring particular skills, but rather “a response to uncertainty is to face uncertainty meaningfully”. 

This study is part of a four-year practice-based research project on sexuality education including in total five secondary schools. Data was generated in creative meetings, so called research circles, consisting of interdisciplinary teacher teams and five researchers. One purpose of the meetings was to critically and creatively explore how sexuality education could be enacted at the school in question. In each school the teacher team included between 5–13 teachers with a variety of subject competencies. This study builds on a collaboration with one of the schools. Data consists of notes and audio recordings produced during research circles, participatory classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers. Participating teachers and students have further given their permissions to be part of the research project. All legal guardians were informed about the project and those with a child under the age of 15 years also had to approve their involvement. The analysis builds on socio-material work of Annemarie Mol (2002; 2010) describing coexisting realities, where the practice shapes and simultaneously is shaped by collaborations, by a myriad of vibrant materialities. Mol (2002, p. 104) further engages in tensions, described as “ways to enact the reality”. This means we will tell local stories about the teaching of sexual practices in secondary school. We create patches engaging in different tensions that Mol means are inevitable in the world we are obliged to share (Mol 2002). Paying attention to tensions in data might further bring alive unexpected and uncertain events (Todd 2016), in this study resident in the paradox of how to teach secondary students about sex.

In our initial patchwork (Mol 2002) we have addressed aspects of tensions and so far brought to the fore different tensions in teaching. For example, students’ expectations of correct answers, teaching balancing between student curiosity and a lack of interest and how to feel comfortable teaching this content as a teacher. It also includes questions on how to plan a lesson ahead but still be open to explore unexpected questions, what’s manageable for both teachers and students to talk about and how to organise student work. What the analysis has also brought to fore is that when students’ realities are made part of teaching (Cense 2018, Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2018), it opens up unexpected possibilities. The work among students in the classroom—filling post-it notes and discussions—opened up for topics where the students brought up lust perspectives such as, love, pleasure, satisfaction, how to have sex, where, with whom and excitement (McGreeney & Kehily 2016; Helbekkmo et al 2021; Allen 2020) but also reproduction. Hence, the student discussions show a tension in whether sex is for reproduction or pleasure? Sexuality education is stated to often be about reproductive bodies (Allen 2021), a teaching practice that in this classroom is challenged. Here, the teachers have the sexual body in focus and the students have the possibility to acknowledge sex to be a mixture of love, pleasure and reproduction. The discussions also show that the students have identified the norm to be heterosexual and between two people, mostly a boy and a girl, where both hopefully are aroused and satisfied at the end. Here, the students both affirm the norm and criticise it at the same time. To conclude, how the teaching of sex might be enacted in Swedish secondary sexuality education is still work in progress.

Allen, L. (2020). Breathing Life into Sexuality Education: Becoming Sexual Subjects. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 27(1), 1–13. Allen, Louisa (2020). Breathing Life into Sexuality Education: Becoming Sexual Subjects. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.7202/1070274ar Cense, M. (2019). Navigating a bumpy road. Developing sexuality education that supports young people’s sexual agency. Sex education, 19(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2018.1537910 Helbekkmo, E. Trengereid Tempero, H. Sollesnes, R & Langeland, E (2021). ‘We expected more about sex in the sex week’-A qualitative study about students’ experiences with a sexual health education programme, from a health-promotion perspective. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 16(1), 1963035. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2021.1963035 Quinlivan, K. (2018). Exploring contemporary issues in sexuality education with young people: Theories in practice. Springer. McGeeney, E. & Kehily, M (2016). Editorial Introduction: Young people and sexual pleasure – where are we now? Sex Education, 16(3), 235–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2016.1147149 Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Duke University Press. Mol, A. (2010). Actor-Network Theory: sensitive terms and enduring tensions. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Sonderheft, 50, 253–269. https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.330874 SKOLFS 2021:9. Förordning om ändring i förordningen (SKOLFS 2011:144) om läroplan för gymnasieskolan. [Proclamations on the changes in regulation on curriculum for upper secondary school, own translation]. Utbildningsdepartementet [Department of Education]. Swedish National Agency for Education (2022). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet (Lgr 22). [Curriculum for the compulsory school system, the preschool class and the school-age educare, own translation]. Skolverket [the Swedish National Agency for Education] https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=9718 The Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2018). Sex- och samlevnadsundervisning. Tematisk kvalitetsgranskning. [Sex Education. Thematic Quality Review, our translation] (400-2016:11445). https://www.skolinspektionen.se/beslut-rapporter-statistik/publikationer/kvalitetsgranskning/2018/sex--och-samlevnadsundervisning/ Todd, S. (2016). Facing uncertainty in education: Beyond the harmonies of Eurovision education. European Educational Research Journal 15(6), 619–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116669731