23 research outputs found
Cripping sex education: lessons learned from a programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments
This paper analyses sexuality and relationship education (SRE) in a Swedish college programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments. Interviews and focus groups were conducted to explore studentsâ experiences of the structure, content and usefulness of SRE, and college personnelâs SRE practices. Results show that, although many of the issues covered are pertinent for all youth, being disabled raises additional concerns: for example how to handle de-sexualising attitudes, possible sexual practices, and how reliance on assistance impacts upon privacy. Crip theory is used as an analytical framework to identify, challenge and politicise sexual norms and practices. Studentsâ experiences of living in a disablist, heteronormative society can be used as resources to develop cripistemologies, which challenge the private/public binary that often de-legitimises learnersâ experiences and separates them from teachersâ âproperâ knowledge production. Crip SRE would likely hold bene ts for non-disabled pupils as well, through its use of more inclusive pedagogy and in work to expand sexual possibilities. Crip SRE has the potential to disrupt taken-for-grantedâ dis/ability and sexuality divides as well as to politicise issues that many young people presently experience as âpersonal shortcomingsâ
Ensuring the right to education for Roma children : an Anglo-Swedish perspective
Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma childrenâs educational interests are well recognized internationally, particularly at the European level. They have prompted a range of policy initiatives and legal instruments to protect rights and promote equality and inclusion, on top of the framework of international human rights and minority protections. Nevertheless, statesâ autonomy in tailoring educational arrangements to their budgets and national policy agendas has contributed to considerable international variation in specific provision for Roma children. As this article discusses, even between two socially liberal countries, the UK and Sweden, with their well-advanced welfare states and public systems of social support, there is a divergence in protection, one which underlines the need for a more consistent and positive approach to upholding the education rights and interests of children in this most marginalized and often discriminated against minority group