Sexuality Education, Identity Formation, and Mental Health

• In Event: Constructing New Possibilities: Minoritized Youth Researchers and the Mental Health Crisis in K–12 Schools

Abstract

When thinking about reducing systemic inequality, scholars often turn to education to mitigate racism (Arneback & Jämte, 2021; Matias & Liou, 2015; Sheppard, 2017), gendered inequality (Aragonés-Gonzaléz & Rosser-Limiñana, 2020; Huggins & Randell, 2007; Karam, n/d; Wilson, 2004), and economic disparity (Johnson, Meija, & Bohn, 2018; Milner & William, 2008; Rao, 2010). Researchers have focused, for example, on access to technology (Evans & Annan, 2018; Fairlie, 2012), STEM content (Baker & Jones, 1993; Sheth, 2019; Stoet & Geary, 2018), and student-centered pedagogical practices (Hernandez, 2019; Mosley, 2010) to address systemic injustices and help reduce racial, ethnic, gendered, and socio-economic inequality. These approaches seek to understand how policy and practice are being used around the world to change outcomes and improve opportunities for young people of color and of immigrant origins (Yeager, 2019).
Missing from this research, however, is how access to sex and sexuality education can help break down structural barriers that limit life chances of minoritized youth through positive identity development (Pound, Langford, & Campbell, 2016). Educational spaces that focus on giving tools for young people to understand their gender and sexuality are important for a positive identity development (Allen, 2005; Alizadeh et al., 2010;). Sex and sexuality education can support youth’s positive self-esteem development by helping them feel secure and informed about their sexual choices as well as affirm their gender and sexual identities which decreases the change of mental health issues (Hobaica & Kwon, 2017; Reiss, 1993; Wilkinson & Raczka, 2015). Nevertheless, the scholarship that looks at the positive impact of sex and sexuality education on the life chances of young people rarely focuses on the role that racial and ethnic belonging have in these results (Arrington-Sanders, Trent, & Morgan, 2014; Evans, 2015; Lamb, Roberts, & Plocha, 2016; Lo et al,2018). The field is even scarcer when taking in consideration immigrant status and non-Christian religious belonging (Faidah, Rusmato, & Rahmawati, 2020; Melendez et al., 2013; Mohyuddin, 2014). This project is centered on interrogating how a culturally-driven sex and sexuality education, which focuses on culturally appropriate tools for transnational youth of color, particularly 1.5 and 2nd generation refugee and immigrant youth, can support youth’s own understandings of how immigration status, citizenship, race, and ethnicity can influence their gender and sexuality identity, self-esteem, and self-concept.
This paper will focus on a community engaged project with late elementary school students at an afterschool program at a community center that serves refugee and immigrant families. In this project, the youth participated in a 40-session sexuality education program and then created animations to teach their peers the lessons that stuck to them. Though data analysis is still in its preliminary stages, the data has shown that the process allowed youth to talk openly about their identity and feel affirmed in an educational space.

Author

• Ana Carolina Fernandes de Bessa Antunes, University of Utah