Strategies for Sexuality and Family Living Education Topics

Guidelines for the Sexual Health Education Component of Comprehensive Health Educational activity

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Overview of Sexual Health Education
• Components of Sexual Health Education
• Sexual Health Educational activity Curriculum Framework
• Resources
• Appendixes
• Printable Version

Components of Sexual Health Instruction

In this section:

• Defining Sexual Wellness Education
• Characteristics of Effective Programs
• Developmentally Appropriate
• Fundamental Principles of Sexual Health Education:
  1. Parent and Community Involvement
  2. Comprehensive School Health Education Program
  3. Well-Trained Teachers
  4. A Focus on All Youth
  5. Pedagogy Methods
• Evidenced-based programs/curricula
• Program Evaluation
• Policy Recommendations
• References

Defining Sexual Health Educational activity

Sexual wellness education is "a lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values well-nigh such of import topics as identity, relationships, and intimacy" (SIECUS, Guidelines, 2004, p.13). Sexual health teaching programs start in prekindergarten and keep through Grade 12. These programs include historic period- and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate information on a broad prepare of topics related to sexuality, including forbearance, contraception and disease prevention. SIECUS farther delineates inclusion of "sexual development, reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, emotions, intimacy, torso paradigm and gender office topics. Sexual health education addresses the biological, socio-cultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of sexuality from the cognitive domain (information); the affective domain (feelings, values and attitudes); and the behavioral domain (advice, decision-making, and other relevant personal skills)" (SIECUS, On the Correct Track, 2004 p. iv). The overall goal of sexual health didactics is to provide young people with the knowledge and skills to promote their health and well-existence as they mature into sexually good for you adults (SIECUS, Guidelines, 2004).

According to SIECUS Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (2004), sexual health education has four chief goals:

• to provide accurate information nearly human sexuality;
• to provide an opportunity for young people to develop and sympathise their values, attitudes, and insights nigh sexuality;
• to help young people develop relationships and interpersonal skills; and
• to help young people exercise responsibility regarding sexual relationships, including addressing forbearance, pressures to become prematurely involved in sexual intercourse, and a employ of contraception and other sexual health measures.

Characteristics of Effective Programs

The characteristics of constructive comprehensive school health education identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/Partition of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) are too applicable to sexual wellness educational activity. These elements, taken together, inform the effectiveness of school policy, exercise and programs. These characteristics are listed below.

Characteristics of an Effective Health Pedagogy Curriculum (CDC, 2008):

• focuses on clear health goals and related behavioral outcomes;
• is enquiry-based and theory-driven;
• addresses individual values and group norms that support health-enhancing behaviors;
• focuses on increasing personal perceptions of risk and harmfulness of engaging in specific wellness-risk behaviors and reinforcing protective factors such as connectedness to school;
• addresses social pressures and influences;
• provides functional wellness knowledge that is bones, accurate, and directly contributes to health-promoting decisions and behaviors;
• uses strategies designed to personalize information and engage students;
• provides age-advisable and developmentally advisable information, learning strategies, teaching methods, and materials;
• incorporates learning strategies, teaching methods, and materials that are culturally inclusive;
• provides adequate time for didactics and learning;
• provides opportunities to reinforce skills and positive wellness behaviors;
• provides opportunities to make positive connections with influential others; and
• includes teacher data and plans for professional person development and grooming that raise effectiveness of instruction and student learning.

In improver, Kirby identifies 17 characteristics that fall into 3 general categories of effective human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and teen pregnancy prevention programs at the middle and high school level that can improve the likelihood of changing educatee beliefs (Kirby et al., 2006).

These three categories are identified below:

• Curricula evolution—involvement of multiple and varied experts, administering a needs assessment to target grouping, pattern consistent with community values and resources, apply of a logic model arroyo and adoption of a pilot-testing phase.
• Curricula content—based on solid theory, focuses on specific behavioral goals of preventing HIV/sexually transmitted diseases (STD)/pregnancy, gives clear messages about responsible behavior, addresses psychosocial chance and protective factors, creates a safe learning environment, uses instructionally sound, culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate learning activities that engage students.
• Implementation of curricula—administrative support of programs, professional development and ongoing support provided for teachers, recruitment of youth, and implementation of curricula with reasonable allegiance.

Kirby found that the programs with longer-term impacts tended to be schools that implemented 12 sessions or more in a sequential fashion over multiple years. Such programs exposed youth to the curriculum over a longer period of time and had the power to reinforce key knowledge, attitudes, and skills yr afterward yr (Kirby et al., 2006, p. 43-44).

Coupled with the CDC/DASH key elements to a higher place, Kirby's 17 characteristics provide of import keys to developing a potent, well-designed program that is more than probable to produce the intended results or outcomes. These characteristics are seen as a set of best practices for teen-pregnancy, HIV- and STD-prevention program development.

In addition, CDC's Wellness Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT), "provides processes and tools to ameliorate curriculum selection and evolution" (CDC, 2007, p.1). The sexual health curriculum module "contains the tools to analyze and score curricula that are intended to promote sexual health and foreclose risk-related health issues, including teen pregnancy, human being immunodeficiency virus infection, and other sexually transmitted diseases" (CDC, 2007 p. SH-ane). This module likewise includes examples of concepts, skills and learning experiences that aid students in prekindergarten–Grade 12 to prefer and maintain behaviors that promote sexual health (CDC, 2007).

Developmentally Appropriate

An inherent principle of sexual health education is that it must exist designed and implemented in a developmentally appropriate style. Like any important program, sexual health education must exist thoughtfully planned, implemented and evaluated to ensure program effectiveness and reflect the needs of the local school community. For each class cluster, (PK–K, ane–4, 5–8, ix–12) the curriculum should reflect the developmental issues of the relevant age group and also prepare children for the upcoming stage of development.

Research by Crooks and Baur, 2008; Pierno, 2007; K, Kelly, 2003; and Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, 2006, indicates that children grow and develop in many unlike means to get healthy and well-functioning adults, including:

• Physically. Their bodies grow in top and weight, and during puberty their bodies mature from that of a child to that of an adult who is capable of reproducing.
• Cognitively.As their brains go along to develop from birth through adolescence, young people's ability to call up, organize, solve problems and predict consequences matures.
• Psychological, Social and Emotional.They learn how to exist in relationships (family, friendships, work, and romantic) with other people; how to recognize, understand, and manage emotions; who they are and establish an identity; and that self-concept evolves over time.
• Morally.In response to parental, peer, community, and societal norms, children learn to distinguish correct from wrong, and over fourth dimension, to formulate their own system of moral values.
• Sexually.They learn how to become sexually good for you people, for example, they discover and/or learn how their bodies piece of work, how they experience almost their bodies, how to care for their bodies, how they perceive their gender identity, how to limited their sense of their gender, who they find themselves attracted to romantically and sexually; how to be in intimate relationships; how to respect their own and others' boundaries; and how to make healthy sexual decisions (Crooks & Baur, 2008; Pierno, 2007; Chiliad, Kelly, 2003; Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, 2006).

(For an example of a developmentally advisable arroyo to sexual wellness pedagogy, refer to Appendix B: Developmentally Advisable Approach to Sexual Wellness Education Example.)

Social worker Angela Oswalt (2009) explains how developmental theorists such equally Eric Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg have contributed to our understanding of child and boyish development. Erickson's research explored the importance of children'south psychological, mental and social development; Piaget studied cerebral development; and Kohlberg studied moral development. All these theories on different aspects of child development contribute to a more than holistic understanding of what to expect from children at dissimilar stages (Oswalt, 2009).

A written report outlining the implementation of a K-12 sexual health education program supports the case for starting sexual health didactics early. Sorace and Goldfarb (north.d.) observed that unproblematic school programs tin promote children'southward development by helping them:

• understand, appreciate, and care for their bodies;
• develop and maintain healthy friendships and relationships;
• avoid unhealthy or exploitative experiences and relationships;
• recognize and deal with peer pressure;
• brand responsible decisions; and
• understand how their behavior is linked to their beliefs well-nigh what is right and wrong.

In an age-appropriate sequence, these concepts can be congenital upon in middle and high schoolhouse so that young people gain the knowledge and skills they demand to develop a good for you sense of sexuality, which includes the ability to avoid unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections throughout their lives.

In 1991, SIECUS sponsored the publication, Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten-twelfth Class, which represents the first national consensus about appropriate topics to teach at each developmental level in a sexual health education program (National Guidelines Job Force, 1992). Revised in 2004, the SIECUS Guidelines outline six fundamental concept areas that represent the virtually general noesis virtually man sexuality and family living:

• human development;
• relationships;
• personal skills;
• sexual behavior;
• sexual health; and
• social club and culture.

These concept areas were farther divided into 36 subtopics with corresponding developmental messages for four unlike historic period groups or grade clusters. The SIECUS Guidelines are not a curriculum but rather "a starting point for instructor and curriculum designers and can be used by local communities to plan new programs, evaluate existing curricula, train teachers, educate parents, conduct research, and write new materials" (SIECUS Guidelines, 2004, p. 21).

The SIECUS Guidelines, the National Sexuality Education Standards(2011) and the Sexual Health Componentof HECAT(CDC, 2007) provide prove of best practice in sexual health education. The Healthy & Balanced Living Curriculum Framework,along with these CT Guidelines provide comprehensive, developmentally appropriate guidance to local districts when developing sexual wellness education curriculum for Connecticut students.

Fundamental Principles of Sexual Health Education

The following central principles have been adjusted for Connecticut and are based on SIECUS Guidelines. The SIECUS Guidelines (2004, p. 19) identify the following principles every bit fundamental to the development of sexual wellness educational activity programs:

• parent and customs interest;
• being part of a comprehensive wellness education plan;
• well-trained teachers;
• a focus on all youth; and
• a variety of teaching methods.

The post-obit guidance is provided to further aggrandize upon the definition of these fundamental principles.

1. Parent and Customs Involvement

Schools alone cannot be responsible for addressing the nation's most serious health and social issues. Schools, families and communities must work collaboratively to help children become salubrious productive citizens (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007, p.5). Parents and guardians are their child'due south primary sexual health educators and have the responsibleness of ensuring that their kid receives developmentally appropriate data most sexual health. It is the school commune's responsibleness to provide a planned, ongoing and systematic health education program that addresses the needs of all students. This programme should be inclusive of developmentally advisable sexual health education. Parents and guardians accept the right to opt their child out of lessons pertaining to family unit life and HIV/AIDS teaching. Each school district is responsible for having a policy in place regarding opt-out procedures. In addition, it is recommended that parents and guardians accept the opportunity to acquire almost the sexual health teaching curriculum and review materials. These opportunities tin can be offered during school orientations, parent educational activity nighttime, posted on school Web sites, or shared informally throughout the school year.

School sexual health education programs must respect the diversity of values and beliefs represented in the customs and run across the educational needs of all students. In club to accomplish this, i strategy may be for a district to convene an advisory committee to permit for dialogue around the sexual health educational activity programme. This committee could be a component of the school health team and may include such members equally parents, family unit members, schoolhouse nurses, teachers, administrators, students, customs and faith-based leaders and representatives from HIV/AIDS organizations, teen-pregnancy prevention coalitions, family unit planning clinics, local health departments, and/or youth-serving organizations. The level of involvement of the advisory commission is the local school district's decision. Considering in that location can be debate most the best mode to approach sexual health education, it is peculiarly of import to get community and parental input on this component of school health (see Appendix C, Building Community Support).

The CSH Guidelines (2007) outline strategies for organizing schoolhouse health teams at the district level to bring together a broad range of school and community stakeholders. The goal of these teams or councils is to provide a systematic approach to developing policy, as well as implementing and monitoring the various school wellness activities, including sexual health educational activity. This coordinated arroyo:

• makes possible the communication of a variety of perspectives, interests, and concerns;
• contributes to districtwide ownership of outcomes; and
• is incorporated into district and school improvement plans as an essential chemical element of the district's educational mission (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007, p. 13).

Community involvement and input tin provide the school sexual health pedagogy plan with:

• an atmosphere of inclusion rather than exclusion;
• diverse perspectives;
• a base of parent and community back up for the programme; and
• additional expertise, support, and resources.

2. Comprehensive School Health Education Program

The CSDE Guidelines for a Coordinated Arroyo to School Health defines comprehensive schoolhouse health education as a sequence of learning experiences that enable children and youth to get healthy, effective and productive citizens. A planned, sequential, PK-12 curriculum addresses the concrete, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health. The curriculum is designed to motivate and assist children and youth to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and reduce wellness-related chance behaviors, helping them to develop and demonstrate increasingly sophisticated health-related cognition, attitudes, skills and practices (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007).

Comprehensive school health education includes an array of topics such equally (CDC, 2006):

• personal, family unit, community, consumer and environmental health;
• sexual wellness education;
• mental and emotional health;
• injury prevention and safety;
• nutrition;
• prevention and command of disease; and
• alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

Comprehensive school health educational activity targets the six youth-wellness-adventure behaviors identified by the CDC'southward Dash, every bit well as protective factors and youth development initiatives. These behaviors, which are the leading causes of morbidity and bloodshed among youth, are tobacco use; alcohol and other drug employ; intentional and unintentional injuries; lack of physical activity; unhealthy eating patterns and sexual behaviors that can atomic number 82 to HIV infection; infection with other sexually transmitted diseases; and unwanted pregnancies (CDC, 2006). "These behaviors which are interrelated and preventable, are ofttimes established during childhood and adolescence and tin extend into adulthood" (CSDE, CSH Guidelines , 2007).

Sexual wellness education is a component of comprehensive school health pedagogy programs and should be medically authentic and based on current inquiry. It should be standards-based using national or country developed standards such every bit the National Health Pedagogy Standards, National Sexuality EducationStandards, and the CSDE'south Salubrious and Balanced Living Curriculum Frameworkand should be offered as part of a planned, ongoing and systematic program taught by certified, highly qualified and effective teachers.

3. Well-Trained Teachers

Best practices in sexual wellness education focus on the importance of the part of teachers and ensuring that they are well trained. One of the about critical factors that influence the effectiveness of sexual health education programs is the comfort and skill level of the instructor. Teachers need to be well prepared to educate students about sexuality. This preparation includes a strong and comprehensive teacher pre-service plan, coupled with ongoing professional development that increases knowledge, skills, and condolement level in the following areas:

• scientific and medically accurate information about human being sexuality topics;
• condolement with the topic;
• cultural competence and the ability to communicate in an inclusive fashion;
• effective facilitation skills;
• creating a comfy and safety learning surround for all students;
• using a multifariousness of engaging teaching methods; and
• modeling universal and specific program values while not imposing their personal values related to sexuality issues (SIECUS, Guidelines, 2004).

In improver, Connecticut'south Mutual Core of Education: Foundational Skills and the Wellness Teaching content-specific standards articulates the cognition, skills, and qualities that Connecticut teachers demand in order to set up students to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Certification

Certification to teach health educational activity at the primary or secondary level requires a PK-12 health teaching education certificate endorsement (043) or schoolhouse nurse/teacher certificate endorsement (072). At the main level (Grades 1000-half-dozen), an unproblematic instructor may evangelize health didactics, but cannot be the sole provider per Section 10-145d-435(a) of the certification regulations. Uncomplicated classroom teachers may provide a role of health educational activity instruction, but a certified teacher in health education must also provide a portion including ongoing:

• directly instruction;
• collaboration with classroom teachers; and
• curriculum evolution.

At the middle and secondary level (Grades 7-12), teachers must be certified in wellness pedagogy or hold a school nurse/teacher certificate to teach health instruction.

Besides certified teachers, schoolhouse health and mental wellness providers such as schoolhouse nurses, school psychologists, schoolhouse social workers and schoolhouse counselors tin serve equally ane) in-school resource persons for health and safety education; 2) providers of counseling for at-risk students; and 3) professionals to assist classroom teachers in developing and implementing developmentally appropriate lessons (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007, p. 31).

According to the 2010 Connecticut School Health Profiles, approximately lxx percent of heart and high school health teachers desire to receive professional person development on a wide range of topics related to HIV, human sexuality, pregnancy prevention and STDs. While certification is a required prerequisite, it does not guarantee that teachers volition have the specific noesis, comfort, and skills necessary to brainwash students about a range of specific sexual wellness education topics. The CSDE recommends that health educators receive specific training in education sexual wellness education that provides opportunities for increased knowledge, comfort, and skills to deliver teaching to students at specific course levels. This foundation of grooming consists of college courses, institutes, and ongoing professional person evolution.

four. A Focus on All Youth

Schools must create healthy learning communities that are physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe and secure for all school community members (CSBE, 2010). To educate, engage and meet the needs of diverse students, local school districts must incorporate beliefs and implement practices that foster understanding and respect for diverse cultures. According to Messina (1994), in providing all youth with relevant sexual health education, school districts must focus on many different dimensions of diversity: 1) racial and ethnic; 2) socioeconomic; 3) sexual orientation and gender identity; and 4) special education needs. These dimensions affect students' attitudes, behavior, and values near sexuality-related issues such as family unit relationships, gender roles, wellness practices, and sexual norms and behavior. To educate and engage various students in a competent manner, teachers must continually strive to be culturally competent. They must continually assess their ain attitudes and potential biases, proceeds noesis nigh their students' experiences, beliefs, and perceptions, interact and communicate in a caring respectful manner, and use culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum materials (Messina, 1994).

Racial and Ethnic Diversity

According to Augustine (2004),

"youth-serving organizations are near successful when their programs and services are respectful of the cultural beliefs and practices of the youth they serve. A culturally competent program values diverseness, conducts cocky-cess, addresses problems that arise when different cultures collaborate, acquires and institutionalizes cultural knowledge, and adapts to the cultures of the individuals and communities served. This may hateful providing an environment in which youth from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds feel comfy discussing culturally derived health beliefs and sharing their cultural practices."

Students' race and ethnicity is an important component of their personhood. Race and ethnicity affects students' language and communication way; health beliefs; family relationships; behavior about sexuality; gender-role expectations; religious beliefs and practices; and many other aspects of their understanding of themselves as sexual people (Advocates for Youth, 2008).

Socioeconomic Diversity

Socioeconomic background also has a profound touch on young people's wellness and sexuality. Socioeconomic inequities touch everything from students' basic behavior about health to pregnant differences in their access to relevant wellness information and health care. In fact, after determining the extent of the problem in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the state, the Connecticut Health Foundation selected eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities as one of its three program priorities (CT Wellness Foundation, 2005).

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

School sexual health educators must teach with total recognition that there are young people of every sexual orientation and gender identity in their classrooms. Instruction virtually relationships, decision-making, dating violence, HIV/STD prevention, pregnancy prevention and many other topics must be relevant to all students. Therefore, it is important for sexual health educators to create an temper in the classroom that demands respect for all students, has zip tolerance for put downs or hate oral communication directed to any youth, and creates condom school environments for all youth to participate fully in programme activities and be integrated with required school-climate comeback plans.

"Omitting the topic of sexual orientation, or teaching about information technology inaccurately or insensitively, is therefore probable to issue in misinformation, in alienating the not-heterosexual population of a given form (Macgillivray, 2000), and in an incomplete sexuality education form (Hedgepeth and Helmich, 1996, p.eighteen, as cited in Schroeder 2007). Education about sexual orientation — including heterosexuality too every bit homosexuality and bisexuality — can merely serve to benefit students of all orientations by debunking myths, by breaking gender-role stereotypes that are frequently behind homophobic beliefs, and by providing factual data alongside every other sexuality-related topic that is addressed in a sexuality education plan (Macgillivray, 2000). Sexual orientation and gender identity and expression should be a component of sexual health education and exist included in a developmentally appropriate fashion as specified in Department 3 of these CT Guidelines.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Common Terminology and Definitions

• sexual orientation: Romantic and sexual allure to people of one's same and/or other genders. Current terms for sexual orientation include gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual and others.
• bisexual: A term used to draw a person who attraction to other people is not necessarily determined by gender.
• heterosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of a unlike gender from their own.
• homosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of their own gender. Most often referred to every bit "gay" or "lesbian."
• gender: The emotional, behavioral and cultural characteristics attached to a person's assigned biological sexual activity. Gender can exist understood to have several components, including gender identity, gender expression and gender role.
• gender identity: People's inner sense of their gender. Most people develop a gender identity that corresponds to their biological sexual activity, merely some do not.
• transgender: A gender identity in which a person'due south inner sense of their gender does not represent to their assigned biological sex.

(National Sexuality Education Standards, 2011)

Students with Disabilities or Other Special Needs

All children, including children with emotional/behavioral, physical, cognitive, communication, or learning disabilities, need accurate, developmentally advisable information to learn virtually their developing sexuality (Wisconsin, 2005, p. 12). In Connecticut, the term special teaching refers to conditions including autism, visual and hearing impairments, concrete and orthopedic disabilities, intellectual and specific learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, spoken communication or language impairments, traumatic encephalon injuries, and many other wellness impairments (CSDE, Bureau of Special Teaching, 2007, p.one). This various group of students has very specific learning needs that must be considered when delivering any curriculum or program content, including sexual health education.

The American School Health Association (ASHA) has adopted a resolution that supports the implementation of sexual health education for students with disabilities or other special needs. This resolution, Quality Sexuality Pedagogy for Students with Disabilities or Other Special Needs, also highlights vital components that ensure sexual wellness teaching is effectively delivered to those with disabilities or other special needs (ASHA, 2009).

Additionally, according to Maurer (2007), providing quality, sexual health instruction has many benefits for all people, and is especially beneficial for children and youth who accept developmental disabilities. The positive effects go beyond bones understanding of sexuality topics themselves and are included in the table beneath.

Benefits of Sexual Health Didactics for Students
with Developmental Disabilities (Maurer 2007)

1. Self Esteem and Empowerment—Concrete development and the accompanying feelings provide the sense of being a part of a larger grouping that shares the same issues. The realization of this fact tin be very empowering for youth who are constantly viewed equally different. In fact, the tangible physical changes and feelings that children and youth observe and experience may exist one of the few instances in which they experience truly equal to nondisabled classmates.
2. two. Skill Building—Sexuality teaching provides data and opportunity to do skills that aid youth in recognizing and responding to social and sexual situations appropriately.
3. 3. Improved Communication—Youth acquire to communicate without guilt or embarrassment when sexuality didactics provides the foundation of anatomically accurate vocabulary. When equipped with the proper terminology, youth can likewise depict questions, symptoms, and concerns more accurately to caregivers or healthcare providers.
4. 4. Setting the Stage—Authentic, historic period-appropriate (and developmentally appropriate) sexuality educational activity sets the stage for futurity topics and discussions. A framework of basic data makes topics that are more avant-garde easier to empathise.
5. 5. Articulating Goals—Discussions about sexuality and social skills assist youth in envisioning their future. Young people may underestimate their capabilities without these discussions. Making physical plans toward realistic goals is easier when youth have had many opportunities for these discussions.
6. six. Preventing Negative Outcomes—Sexuality education provides youth with data and skills to recognize and foreclose sexual abuse. It besides provides a framework to understand and avert behaviors that are socially inappropriate or illegal.

5. Teaching Methods

Sexual health teaching should be delivered through a variety of engaging and agile teaching methodologies, including, just not limited to, small grouping discussions, brainstorming, role-playing for skill practice, and apply of drama and literature. Considering at that place are many individual, family, and cultural attitudes and beliefs related to homo sexuality, students benefit from opportunities to reflect on what they are learning individually in journals, in small and large grouping discussions, and with their parents or guardians through homework assignments. Students demand opportunities to personalize what they are learning in class and consider how it applies to them in their own lives.

At the classroom level, teachers must:

• create a good for you and condom learning environment by involving students in establishing grouping norms, modeling and enforcing those norms, demonstrating comfort with the topic, showing intendance, business organization and being nonjudgmental;
• address the needs of all students by being open and attuned to questions, providing opportunities for students to ask questions anonymously, answering questions factually, with medical accuracy and in a developmentally appropriate mode, referring students to health or guidance services as advisable, and following land law and district policies regarding disclosures of sexual abuse or intimate partner violence. Adolescent Health Intendance: Legal Rights of Teensprovides information on Connecticut and federal laws in areas such every bit mandated reporting, privacy rights, reproductive wellness care, medical weather condition and treatments and privileged communications (Heart for Children's Advocacy);
• facilitate discussion by understanding and managing group dynamics, using inclusive language, listening carefully to students, asking thoughtful open-ended questions, encouraging the sharing of ideas and perspectives by all students, discussing the range of sexual values held in society, and encouraging students to communicate with their parents or guardians and effectively utilise a broad diversity of active learning strategies; and
• reach the program goals and objectives through clearly articulated lessons that present medically and scientifically accurate information, provide opportunities for students to explain their attitudes and beliefs, promote positive health beliefs, build cognition and healthy behaviors and model skills such as refusal and responsible decision making by providing opportunities for students to practice these skills and get feedback and assess what students are learning.

The CSDE's Connecticut Accountability for Learning Initiative (CALI) has partnered with the Leadership and Learning Middle to provide professional development in effective teaching strategies. These strategies, listed below, were developed by Marzano, et al., (2001), and are applicable to all content areas, including sexual health education. Effective Teaching Strategies include:

1. identifying similarities and differences;
2. summarizing and note taking;
3. reinforcing effort and providing recognition;
4. homework;
5. nonlinguistic representations;
6. cooperative learning;
7. setting objectives and providing feedback;
8. generating and testing hypotheses; and
9. cues, questions, and advance organizers.

An overview of the enquiry supporting these strategies and practical applications for the classroom tin be accessed at the CSDE CALI Information and Resource Web site.

Evidenced-based programs/curricula

Research shows that programs that focus on reducing sexual take chances-taking behaviors and preventing HIV can be constructive in delaying young people engaging in sexual intercourse (Kirby 2007). When choosing a plan, school districts should ensure that the program choice is based on identified community needs and implemented with allegiance to attain the desired event.

Fidelity is the extent to which a curriculum or programme is delivered in accord with the intended design.

Guidance on evidenced-based programs is offered through:

• The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy: What Works 2010 Curriculum-Based Programs That Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy; and
• United States Department of Health and Man Services: Part of Adolescent Health.

"Evaluation is a valuable means for measuring program effectiveness and determining if newly developed and existing sexuality education programs are accomplishing their goals and objectives" (Fetro, 1994, p.15).

Programme Evaluation

Evaluation of any program includes iii types of activities: 1) identifying what needs to happen (formative evaluation); ii) examining whether and how well educational activities are existence carried out (process evaluation); and 3) demonstrating effectiveness (summative or outcome evaluation) (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007, p. 19).

As a component of comprehensive school wellness teaching, Fetro (1994) states that sexual health education should be evaluated systematically to determine:

• how to design and/or revise the program to meet the needs of students and the community;
• how much sexual health education is actually being taught (i.e., how much time is allocated during each grade level);
• whether the plan is being implemented effectively and every bit planned; and
• how effectively the proscribed learning objectives are being accomplished (i.e., outcomes).

The Connecticut Guidelines for a Coordinated Approach to School Health (2007, p. 39) lists evaluation strategies, which have been refined and adapted for evaluation of sexual wellness education programs:

Formative Evaluation

• Assess educational needs by: 1) collecting baseline information about students (e.g., knowledge, behaviors and attitudes); 2) determining pupil interests and concerns; and iii) determining schoolhouse and community needs (Fetro, 1994).
• Schedule ongoing, systematic curriculum review process, preferably every three to 5 years, to update medical and scientific accuracy and programme effectiveness.
• Make up one's mind whether new curriculum goals have emerged; for example, the function of the Internet and other technology and their impact on young people's communication, relationships, and hazard-taking behaviors.
• Conduct ongoing course-level determinative assessments.
• Ask questions such as:
  • What are the program goals/objectives?
  • What resources already exist to run into these goals/objectives – both within the school and community?
  • What is required by the Country Department of Education or local school board?
  • What specific sexual health education curriculum has been chosen for the program? If an evidence-based curriculum was chosen, is it being implemented with fidelity?
  • If curriculum materials are existence developed or adopted, do they comprise Kirby's central characteristics of evidence-based curricula (2007), as appropriate?

Process Evaluation

• Monitor the program to determine implementation and program delivery.
• Analyze course enrollment (east.g., determine number of classes offered and number of students enrolled).
• Use surveys of students' cognition, attitudes, skills and behaviors, focus group interviews with students, teachers, parents, and administrators, classroom observations, and meetings to gather data on perceptions of program strengths, weaknesses and needs; preferences regarding classroom resources; and the relevance of topics or objectives.
• Assess instructor competency.

Ask the post-obit questions:

• Is sexual health didactics consistently offered across the grade levels and the district? What are the gaps or overlaps? What topics are existence covered in each grade level?
• Is in that location adequate time and are there adequate materials and supplies provided for the delivery of sexual health education?
• Are information and materials up-to-date, developmentally appropriate, and medically and scientifically accurate?
• What recommendations do health didactics teachers and classroom teachers take for comeback in curriculum, classroom pedagogy and pupil assessment?
• What recommendations do students take for program improvement?
• What is the comfort level of the health education teachers and classroom teachers delivering the curricula?
• Are the wellness education teachers and classroom teachers constructive and highly qualified?
• Is sufficient professional development in sexual wellness education offered to teachers, administrators, and health and mental health professionals?
• In addition to professional evolution preparation, what support is provided for health education teachers and classroom teachers?
• How tin implementation of sexual health education programs be improved?

Outcome evaluation

• Bear ongoing, developmentally advisable grade-level summative (or effect) assessments.
• Administer pre- and postal service-surveys to determine changes in students' knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behavioral intentions.
• Conduct in-depth interviews with school staff and focus groups with students and teachers to identify their perceptions of the affect of the program.
• Examine multiple sources of information to inform curriculum content, skill focus and program commitment (e.chiliad., Connecticut Schoolhouse Health Survey and other appropriate state and local health data).

Enquire the following questions:

• Is the sexual health education programme meeting its objectives?
• How effective is the program at each class level?
• What are the specific furnishings or outcomes of the program?
• How exercise teachers and other school personnel remember the program has affected students?
• How do students recollect the program has affected them?

For schools, evaluating beliefs modify (outcome evaluation) is the most challenging. According to the CSH Guidelines, "each commune may have different outcome questions based on their specific priorities. These questions cannot be answered without baseline information such equally the informational data obtained in a needs cess. Conducting outcome evaluations can require special skills, primarily considering it is hard to decide whether improved outcomes can be attributed to the program or other factors in the community, such equally a media campaign. A local health department or university may be able to help districts in identifying and conducting appropriate effect evaluations" (CSDE, CSH Guidelines , 2007, p. 19).

Many school districts rely on the biannual assistants of the Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) as one data source to appraise progress in student health behaviors. The YRBS asks students a number of questions almost sexual behavior and allows land departments of education and local education agencies (typically larger cities) to compare the status of boyish wellness nationally. In Connecticut, the YRBS is called the Connecticut School Health Survey, and is co-administered by the State Departments of Education and Public Health. Results from this survey can be accessed at the Connecticut Department of Public Health Web site.
The Connecticut School Wellness Survey is i source of data, and it is recommended that local districts examine multiple sources of data to determine health-gamble behavioral trends in youth and adolescents that volition inform their school health policies and programs (teen birth rates, STD rates, school dropout, access to reproductive health intendance).

Policy Recommendations

In summary, the CSDE has outlined eight fundamental policy recommendations to back up implementation of comprehensive school health education. Similar policies that back up the fundamental principles stated to a higher place should be established for a sexual health instruction programme.

Adjusted from the CSH Guidelines , 2007, these policy recommendations include:

1. Certified teachers. Sexual wellness pedagogy should be taught by certified, highly qualified, constructive teachers. Connecticut'south Mutual Core of Instruction: Foundational Skills and the Health Pedagogy content specific standards articulates the cognition, skills and qualities that Connecticut teachers need in lodge to fix students to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
2. Curriculum guidelines. The district should have guidelines for the development, review and adoption of curriculum. The CSDE'south Healthy and Balanced Living Curriculum Frameworkis a best practice document, based on the National Health Education Standards and created to guide school districts' development of schoolhouse wellness education, including sexual health educational activity curriculum.
3. Standards-based program. Sexual health education should be offered every bit part of a planned, ongoing, systematic, sequential, and standards-based school health didactics program. Standards represent an articulation of what a student should know and be able to do (CSDE, 2006). The Healthy & Balanced Living Curriculum Framework, the Guidelines for the Sexual Health Education Component of Comprehensive Health Education, and the National Sexuality Teaching Standards provide information-based and skills-based content standards and performance indicators that promote beliefs change and health literacy for students in prekindergarten–Grade 12.
4. Sufficient time and resource. The district should allocate sufficient time and resources for effective teaching. Based on research and all-time practice, the CSDE highly recommends that at a minimum, students in prekindergarten–Class iv receive a minimum of 50 classroom hours in health pedagogy per bookish year and students in Grades five-12 receive a minimum of 80 hours in wellness education per academic twelvemonth (CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007). Within those allotted times it is recommended that 12 or more than course sessions be dedicated to sexual wellness teaching in order to achieve longer-term impacts (Kirby et al., 2006).
5. Attending to diverse learning needs. Sexual wellness education should offer multidisciplinary, multicultural perspectives and provide learning opportunities for multiple learning styles, including instruction and classroom materials that address the needs of all children and youth.
6. Ongoing professional development. The district should provide ongoing, timely professional development related to sexual health education for teachers, program administrators, and school health and mental health providers. School districts should appraise and address teachers' knowledge, skill and comfort level to ensure effective delivery of this pedagogy.
7. Alignment of curriculum, education and assessment. Sexual health pedagogy curriculum, instruction and cess should be aligned. The alignment of curriculum, didactics and assessment ensures that classroom implementation and pupil assessment are consequent and that student assessment strategies measure whether students have attained curriculum objectives.
8. Programme review. The health education program should be reviewed on a regular basis, at a minimum of every three to 5 years, to make up one's mind if content and materials need to be updated or revised. This includes reviewing educational materials that are used in the program.
9. Plan evaluation. The district should acquit regular evaluation of the health education program at a minimum of every three to five years. Sexual health didactics programs should be evaluated systematically to make up one's mind how much of the curriculum is beingness delivered and whether didactics is consequent with the planned curriculum.

10. (Adapted from CSDE, CSH Guidelines, 2007, p. 30)

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Source: https://portal.ct.gov/SDE/Publications/Sexual-Health-Education-Component-of-Comprehensive-Health-Education/Components-of-Sexual-Health-Education