"Becoming a Woman": Teaching Sex Education to Young Women With Intellectual Disabilities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum Choices for Building and Understanding Complexity in and out of School

Abstract

Historically, persons with disabilities have been juvenalized and excluded from discussions that relate sex and sexuality. While some strides have been made to bring awareness to this as a human rights issue, there is still a silence that surrounds it, especially for young women with intellectual disabilities. This particular qualitative study is a narrative case study design that used field notes, in depth individual interviews, and focus group interviews to uncover the voices of young women with intellectual disabilities and their views on themselves both as women and as sexual beings. Furthermore, it raises epistemological and pedagogical questions pertaining to what constitutes appropriate education for students with intellectual disabilities and how teachers go about providing it.

Authors

• Amy M. Williamson, The University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa

• Kagendo Mutua, The University of Alabama