This paper explores Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) as a vehicle for transformative pedagogies in rural and socially vulnerable contexts, integrating feminist and queer approaches that place the body, emotions, and active participation at the centre of learning. Drawing on Paulo Freire’s conception of education as a practice of freedom, we understand education as a process that stands in opposition to banking models of education, and conceives learning as a dialogical, situated, and transformative experience (Freire, 1970). Within this framework, CSE emerges as a particularly fertile pedagogical space for the implementation of transformative pedagogies. Rather than constituting a mere set of contents about sexuality(ies), CSE invites to rethink traditional modes of teaching and (un)learning by foregrounding dimensions historically excluded from the school curriculum: bodies, emotions, affects, relationships, and lived experiences.

Feminist and queer pedagogies provide a theoretical and political framework for understanding this transformative potential of CSE. Closely linked to social movements, these pedagogies conceptualise education as a situated, embodied, affective, and collective process, capable of challenging the normative frameworks that regulate how knowledge is (re)produced and which bodies and voices are recognised as legitimate (Platero, 2018).

From an intersectional perspective, classrooms are shaped by multiple, intersecting axes of inequality that cannot be addressed in isolation (Crenshaw, 1989). Although CSE is often associated primarily with gender and sexuality(ies), its transformative potential lies precisely in its capacity to bring all these dimensions into dialogue and to question the processes of exclusion that operate within educational and social contexts. 

This theoretical framework not only informs our analysis but also serves as the methodological point of departure for the design of a socio-educational intervention in rural contexts, combining a review of the literature with participatory practices. Drawing on workshops conducted in the rural schools (Centros Rurales Agrupados, CRA) of Alta Ribagorza (Huesca, Spain), the study shows that CSE enables a shift in the locus of knowledge, legitimising experiences, histories, and knowledges often excluded from the curriculum.

The results indicate that these practices foster meaningful learning, strengthen educational equity and promote the development of educational projects that care for otherness and challenge the reproduction of norms. Far from reproducing a differential socialisation based on gender stereotypes or adult-centred hierarchies, workshops enhance a more equitable participation, where diversities apply as a resource, instead of as an obstacle. Additionally, the embodied activities developed generate (un)learning practices that apply far beyond cognitive dimension.

When CSE is approached from feminist and queer perspectives, it enables an intersectional questioning of the norms that shape schooling –in terms of gender, sexuality(ies), corporeality, age, origin, and ability, among others– and fosters spaces where diversity is not merely abstractly tolerated but actively inhabited, named, and cared for. This is particularly meaningful in rural contexts, which are often assumed to be less open to non-hegemonic approaches. Experience shows, on the contrary, that when spaces of trust and continuity are created, educational communities actively engage in processes of critical reflection and transformation. Moreover, this highlights that implementing such practices in rural scenarios is not only feasible but also challenges prevailing prejudices about the lack of pedagogical innovation outside urban environments, demonstrating that rurality can also be(come) a fertile ground for critical and transformative educational initiatives.

The discussion highlights the importance of differentiating between normative and transformative CSE, reflecting on how schools can function as spaces of emancipation or as mechanisms for reproducing inequalities. Finally, the study argues that CSE, when articulated with transformative pedagogies, constitutes a tool for pedagogical innovation and social improvement, with transferable potential to other educational contexts and teacher training, contributing to more equitable and diversity-sensitive systems.

The research adopts an exploratory design with two complementary components. The first, theoretical-methodological component consisted of a literature review on feminist, queer, and transformative pedagogies, which made it possible to define the guiding principles of the intervention: the problematisation of normativity, the questioning of teacher-student hierarchies, the centrality of the body and emotions, and the collective construction of knowledge (Platero, 2018). These pedagogical approaches understand learning as a situated, relational, and embodied process, challenging neutral or universalist conceptions of education. This review not only contextualizes the study but also serves as a methodological input for designing participatory dynamics and analytical criteria, ensuring coherence between the epistemological framework and the practical intervention. In addition, CSE is examined as a pedagogical framework through which these pedagogies can be operationalised, given its potential to address affectivity, diversity and power relations in school (Morgade 2019). Regarding the practical component, participatory workshops were carried out in the rural schools (CRA Alta Ribagorza), conceived as an educational laboratory for implementing sensory- and body-based methodologies. The workshops (n = 28; duration: 120 minutes each) involved primary school students (aged 8–12) and their families, and focused on artistic activities, role-playing, and guided discussions. These methodologies were selected to foster experiential learning, privileging expression, dialogue, and collective reflection over transmissive teaching models (hooks, 1994). Participation was a central axis of the intervention: activities were designed to adapt to the group’s responses, enabling children and families to co-construct meanings and question normative assumptions collectively. The aim was to promote processes of (un)learning in which students acted as active agents, recognizing their embodied knowledge and lived experiences as valid sources of learning. Data collection and analysis were based on field notes and reflective journals produced by the workshop facilitator, which recorded observations regarding participation, emerging emotions, and group dynamics. This reflexive documentation acknowledges the situated position of the facilitator and aligns with feminist qualitative research approaches that emphasize reflexivity and affect (Haraway, 1995). The data were analysed through thematic coding (Peel, 2020), identifying emergent categories related to participation, corporeality, and the questioning of normative frameworks. This analytical process allowed for the identification of tensions, resistances, and transformative moments arising during the workshops, offering insights into the pedagogical potential of participatory, embodied interventions in rural primary education contexts.

The results invite us to focus not so much on CSE as content, but on transformative pedagogies that allow (re)thinking and co-constructing education as a space from which to articulate other possible worlds. In this sense, CSE is revealed as a key tool, but not self-sufficient: its transformative potential will depend on the pedagogical, political, and epistemological framework from which it is implemented. Education is never neutral and can serve both to social transformation and the reproduction of the existing order (Freire, 2001, in Carrera-Fernández et al., 2018). Within this framework, feminist and queer pedagogies problematise the very objective of education by questioning how institutionalised practices regulate sexualities, producing “normal” and “deviant” subjects, thereby unsettling the taken-for-granted regimes of truth that structure what can be known, taught, and desired within schooling. (Britzman, 1995). Applied to CSE, this approach makes it possible to distinguish between proposals that merely transmit information and those that create emancipatory spaces to challenge the regimes of truth that sustain gender binarism, compulsory heterosexuality, and other forms of exclusion. In contrast to normative logics, transformative pedagogies do not seek simply to “include” diversity within a pre-existing framework, but rather to reconfigure the conditions of (un)learning, giving rise to educational projects oriented toward social justice and equity. In this sense, the experience analysed –based on participatory workshops in rural contexts and a theoretical review– allows us to conclude that CSE, when grounded in feminist and queer pedagogies, contributes to more just and equitable educational practices, including in increasingly overlooked rural contexts. Nevertheless, it highlights the need to sustain ongoing critical reflection on which form of CSE is implemented, with what objectives, and from which positionalities, to prevent a potentially emancipatory tool from ultimately reinforcing the very logics of control it seeks to challenge.

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