Sex Education for Adolescent Girls With Intellectual Disabilities: Exceptional or Special?

• In Event: Boundary, Identity, and Narrative: The Significance of Method and Inquiry in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) Research

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of completing a sex education curriculum on the understanding, choice making and outcomes of young women with intellectual disabilities. Sexuality, though a basic human right, is an area of little research and instruction for intellectually disabled youth. Confounding this further, is the silence that shrouds sexuality as it relates to disabled women, and young women with intellectual disabilities, in particular. Data were collected using qualitative research methods with sixteen young women with significant intellectual disabilities. Results revealed that the challenges of teaching sex education to young women with intellectual disabilities stem not merely from the complexity of the issues vis-à-vis the participants’ disabilities, but on the teachers’ ingrained expectations of the students’ lack of/limited knowledge.

Authors

• Kagendo Mutua, The University of Alabama

• Amy Williamson, The University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa

• Robin M. Smith, SUNY - College at New Paltz