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Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

 
Venue: 
Zoom [Registration link available below]
FAMES Common Room
Event date: 
Monday, 14 March, 2022 - 17:30

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Changing sexuality education in Japanese schools

This talk focuses on how sexuality education is changing in Japan by considering recent revisions to national and prefectural policy guidelines and through an analysis of focus group data from high school students. This will show that the language of human rights, LGBT and gender have recently started to appear in policy and curriculum documents, but direct reference to sex is largely absent. Discussion of gender is framed tightly within the gender binary, and differences between boys and girls rather similarities are emphasized. The focus group interviews show that high school students draw on a wide variety of themes to talk about sexual safety and risk, including legality, age appropriateness, responsibility, coercion and consent, and impact on others. The analysis suggests that the ability of these students to discuss sexuality issues in broad, nuanced and informed ways is despite rather than as a result of current provision of sexuality education in Japan.

This research has been supported by three Japan Society for the Promotion of Science grants-in-aid.

Beverley Yamamoto is the Chair holder for the Osaka University UNESCO Chair in Global Health and Education. She has been a member of faculty at Osaka University in the Graduate School of Human Sciences since 2006 where she is currently a professor of Critical Studies in Education for Transformation in the newly established Department of Kyosei Studies (Critical studies in coexistence, symbiosis and conviviality). She is also the Director of the Human Sciences International Undergraduate Programme and Deputy Director of the International College.