Ferfolja, Tania, Manlik, Kate, and Ullman, Jacqueline (2024) Parents’ Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality Diversity Inclusion in the K-12 Curriculum: Appropriate or Not? Sex Education, 24 (5). pp. 632-647.

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Abstract

Recent years have witnessed growing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity in Australia; yet, its inclusion in the school curriculum remains contentious. Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a commonly held belief that parents consider the inclusion of such topics inappropriate. In the light of this, this paper focuses on an analysis of three qualitative items from an Australian national survey of parents of children attending government-funded schools. Informed by the responses to these questions, we sought to better understand the concept of age-appropriateness present in the discourses deployed by a (minority) number of Australian parents who did not support gender and sexuality diversity-inclusivity in the curriculum. Thematic data analysis identified three key themes used by parents to warrant gender and sexuality diversity curriculum exclusion based on age inappropriateness: namely, inclusion is ‘confusing’; children are too ‘immature’; and children are too ‘easily influenced’.

Item ID:	85433
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1472-0825
Keywords:	Gender and sexuality diversity; relationships and sexual health education; age-appropriate; curriculum; parents
Copyright Information:	© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Date Deposited:	13 May 2025 01:38
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3902 Education policy, sociology and philosophy > 390203 Sociology of education @ 40% 39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390111 Physical education and development curriculum and pedagogy @ 10% 39 EDUCATION > 3904 Specialist studies in education > 390406 Gender, sexuality and education @ 50%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160202 Gender aspects in education @ 50% 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160203 Inclusive education @ 50%
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