Teacher and Health Service Staff Values regarding Sexuality Education in an Urban School District in Indiana

INTRODUCTION With the recent creation of National Sexuality Education Standards, clear guidelines have been established for those responsible for teaching sexuality education in the schools (Future of Sex Education Initiative, 2012). These standards were designed to provide a rationale for teaching sexuality education that is evidence-based. Having sexuality standards are important for educators who are currently responsible for sexuality education in their school setting in addition to helping prepare future sexual health educators in teacher training programs in academic institutions. The standards provide sexuality educators with a plan for providing developmentally appropriate sexual health information. By having these standards, school administrators and teachers will now be able to provide parents and community members with a sequential approach to educating students which in turn, will hopefully reduce some of the fears and concerns about teaching sexuality education in school-based settings. While these standards are still new to the field, there is an indication in research that health education teacher training programs are not adequate in preparing future sexuality educators. In fact, studies have shown that many teachers responsible for sexuality education have little formal training in sexuality education (Eisenberg, Madsen, Oliphant, Sieving, & Resnick, 2010) and would be interested in receiving more training (Dodge, et al., 2008). This lack of training in the field could interfere or create a bias toward accurate or evidence-based information. It has been found that a teacher's personal experiences and beliefs influence his or her sexuality education teaching (Timmerman, 2009). Although many researchers have studied the impact of sexuality education on students, not much is known about the values of the teachers related to how they deliver sexuality education content to their students. Moore and Rienzo (2000) examined sexuality topics taught in sexuality education classrooms and found that teachers were omitting topics in their curriculum based on what they felt was important to teach. Some teachers were uncomfortable with topics and thought they were controversial or difficult to teach to students. Topics that were reported as not important or were not taught by at least 50% of the teachers were abortion (39.8%), sexuality and religion (38.7%), sexuality and law (37.5%), shared sexual behavior (35.6%), diversity (31.8%), masturbation (28.0%), fantasy (24.9%), sexual dysfunction (24.1%) and sexuality and the arts (8.0%). In this case, personal values directly influenced what each teacher included in his or her instruction. Woo and colleagues (2011) examined predictors of implementing sexuality education in a school system. Teachers in this study self-reported that their personal values had the greatest influence when it came to creating their sex education curriculum. Milton (2001) explored qualities and attributes that Australian teachers found helpful for teaching sexuality education. She found that teachers valued being neutral, accepting and open-minded with regards to issues in sexuality education. Understanding the values that teachers hold about sexuality education could help influence the pre-service and professional training of school-based sexuality educators. This study will attempt to fill in the gaps in the literature with regards to exploring teacher values regarding sexuality education by surveying sex educators in a large, urban school district in Indiana. METHODS Participants The data for this study were obtained from teachers, school counselors and social workers (n = 159) in a large, urban, school district in Indiana who were responsible for teaching sexuality education at the secondary school level (grades 7-10) during the 2008-2009 school year. The majority of the respondents indicated they were classroom/homeroom teachers (31%) and health or physical education teachers (26%). …