What happens under the duvet?

Teaching about sexual practices in Swedish secondary school

Abstract

“Less of everything else, more of what sex is!” fifteen-year-old Hilda declared in a student interview about her recent sexuality education unit. Although the interview also indicated that students found the teaching engaging, it was clear that something was missing. This study is part of a four-year research project exploring Swedish sexuality education in five secondary schools. In this paper, we focus on the teaching at one of the participating schools, where teachers chose to address the question of what sex might be. The study builds on the work of Annemarie Mol and her perspective on multiple realities. The aim is to investigate how sex might be enacted in Swedish secondary sexuality education. The study contributes with a patchwork of situated events from the teaching of sexual practices. This patchwork comprises student expectations, teacher planning, student participation, sexual role models, and the experiences of both students and teachers.