Safe, respectful and functional: teachers’ talk about sex education

Comprehensive sex education in UK schools requires that teachers extend their professional competence (often without additional training) to provide students with a knowledge of sex and relationships, to enable them to make informed decisions in this arena. The sex education programme is embedded in a broader programme of citizenship education, which emphasises notions of rationality, choice, rights and responsibility. This paper is based on semi structured interviews with six teachers, exploring the question of how teachers understood their role in teaching sex education, and how they saw this role intersecting with other elements of their professional identity. One key element in sex education practice is the expectation that teachers be ‘role models’ for young people, functioning as embodied exemplars of the idealised “sexual citizen” – someone able to manage their sexuality in a responsible way, monitoring risk and making informed and responsible choices. The discourses of sex education are heteronormative, and while acknowledging homosexuality, tend to focus overwhelmingly on heterosexual identities and relationships. Using a Foucauldian discourse analytic approach, this paper explores three intersecting discourses in teachers’ accounts: ‘professionalism’ in sex education; reason and risk; and modelling normative heterosexuality. The implications of these discourses are considered in relation to the construction of teachers’ positioning as educational experts and professionals.