South African life orientation teachers: (not) teaching about sexuality diversity.

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Journal of Homosexuality Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjhm20

South African Life Orientation Teachers: (Not) Teaching About Sexuality Diversity a

b

Renée DePalma PhD & Dennis Francis PhD a

Faculdade de Ciencias da Educación, Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain b

Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Accepted author version posted online: 04 Aug 2014.Published online: 25 Sep 2014.

Click for updates To cite this article: Renée DePalma PhD & Dennis Francis PhD (2014) South African Life Orientation Teachers: (Not) Teaching About Sexuality Diversity, Journal of Homosexuality, 61:12, 1687-1711, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.951256 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.951256

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Journal of Homosexuality, 61:1687–1711, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2014.951256

South African Life Orientation Teachers: (Not) Teaching About Sexuality Diversity RENÉE DEPALMA, PhD Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin - Madison] at 05:07 02 February 2015

Faculdade de Ciencias da Educación, Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

DENNIS FRANCIS, PhD Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Although South Africa is one of the most progressive countries in the world in terms of constitutional and legislative rights for LGBT individuals, education is one of many social arenas where these ideals are not carried out. Interviews with 25 practicing teachers revealed very little description of practice, but widely divergent understandings around sexual diversity that drew on various authoritative discourses, including religious teachings, educational policy, science, and the powerful human rights framework of the South African constitution. Implications for teacher education include directly engaging with these discourses and providing training, teaching materials, and practical guidelines based on existing policy. KEYWORDS sexual diversity, education, authoritative discourse, human rights, teachers

INTRODUCTION From a legislative perspective, the Republic of South Africa is a world leader in support for LGBT rights. According to the data from the most recent report of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (Itaborahy, 2012), South Africa prohibited employment discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1996, prohibited incitement to hatred based on sexual orientation in 2000, permitted joint adoption by same-sex couples in Address correspondence to Renée DePalma, Faculdade de Ciencias da Educación, Universidade da Coruña, Campus de Elviña, s/n, 15071 A Coruña, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] 1687


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2002, passed gender recognition legislation in 2004, recognized marriage for same-sex couples in 2006, implemented legislation equalizing the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts in 2007, and was the first of only six countries in the world that currently include sexual orientation as a category protected by its constitution: “No person shall be unfairly discriminated against on the grounds of race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, color, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language, birth, or marital status” (Government Gazette of South Africa, 1996). The social realities are not so encouraging (Amnesty International, 2012). A report by the Human Rights Watch, while acknowledging the legislative accomplishments of the South African post-apartheid government and their impact on other nations struggling with LGBT rights, noted that “South Africa still confronts unfulfilled responsibilities in implementing its constitutional protections . . . too often, South Africa has let its commitments rest on the shelf or remain idle in constitutional clauses, unsupported by action” (2003, p. 55). Sociocultural traditions rooted in bigoted forms of Calvinism and patriarchal structures for Black Africans have contributed to violence that includes “corrective” rape of non-gender-conforming women (Phamodi, 2011)1 and the beating of younger men by their elders to rid them of homosexual tendencies (Astbury & Butler, 2005; Gevisser & Cameron, 1995; Isaack & Judge, 2006; Louw, 2005). Indeed, during the summer of 2012, while data were collected for this study, a gay man was beheaded (Gerber, 2012) and a lesbian was beaten by a security guard (Van Schie, 2012), both because of their sexual orientation. Education may be one of those areas where South African commitment to LGBT equality has remained on the shelf. For instance, South African gay and lesbian youth interviewed by Butler and Astbury (2008) unanimously implicated schools as one of several social contexts that provided openly homophobic role models. In a survey of 498 gay and lesbian people in Gauteng province, respondents reported verbal, physical, and sexual abuse perpetrated largely but not exclusively by fellow pupils; researchers recommended that the Departments of Education and the South African Police Services collaborate with gay and lesbian organizations to minimize LGBT hate crimes (Polders & Wells, 2004). Richardson (2006) pointed out that large-scale research into LGBT youth experience is hampered by lack of access to township schools, but that several smaller-scale studies have indicated that the impressive legal protections they should enjoy have done little to ameliorate experiences of victimization and bullying in schools, even by teachers. Msibi’s (2012) research with queer township youth explored how derogatory language, fears of contagion, and perceptions about religion and culture serve to marginalize these young people, while teachers may explicitly or implicitly support these discourse or, at best, feel unprepared to challenge them. Research conducted with 18 self-identified gay and lesbian youth between 16 and 21 years of age revealed harassment both by peers and


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teachers, as well as a silence in the curriculum around LGBT issues (Butler, Alpaslan, Strümpher, & Astbury, 2003). Francis’ (2012) research showed that issues related to sexual diversity were, in most cases, ignored or avoided by teachers, and when teachers did include aspects of homosexuality, they took up positions that endorsed the idea of compulsory heterosexuality. To explain the arguments teachers construct around the addressing of LGBT issues in the classroom, we have drawn on Russian philologist Mikhail Bakhtin’s understanding of authoritative discourse. He explains that people collaboratively construct truth through dialogue, but that these dialogic interactions may invoke authoritative discourse, which is seen as coming from a higher and unquestionable source of power: The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it . . . We encounter it with its authority already fused to it . . . for example, the authority of religious dogma, or of acknowledged scientific truth or of a currently fashionable book . . . It is indissolubly fused with its authority— with political power, an institution, a person—and it stands and falls together with that authority. (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 342–343)

For the purposes of our study, we have chosen to focus on four key authoritative discourses that teachers draw on as they construct their personal and professional positioning with respect to teaching about sexual diversity: scientific, religious, legislative, and policy. It is important to consider that these discourses are strategically taken up and filtered through the understanding and memories of those who deploy them. Scientific discourse, for example, has postulated in the past that homosexuality is an aberration or disorder; homosexuality as a category was not fully removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1986,2 and it was removed from the World Health Organization (WHO) list of mental disorders in 1990.3 Early scientific understanding of homosexuality also conflated sexual orientation and gender identity, as evidenced by the theory of sexual inversion developed at the end of the 19th century: “If a woman is attracted to another woman not only is she conceptualized as male in terms of her sexuality, but she is also constructed as having a masculine gender and, frequently, male secondary sexual characteristics” (Taylor, 1998, p. 288). These understandings, which have been replaced by modern scientific ones, may remain alive in the popular imagination and available as a discursive strategy. They may interact with more recent scientific views as well as popular beliefs to form hybrid, vague, and incomplete explanations for homosexuality involving hormonal and genetic malfunctions, as described by some of our participants. Religious discourses around homosexuality have been largely critical and have intersected with psychiatric discourses to create the worldwide, lucrative industry of so-called conversion, or “gay cure” therapy, a form of


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so-called psychotherapy that has recently been banned in the U.S. state of California (Associated Press, 2012). While Christianity, the predominant religion in the geographical context of our study, has been largely constructed as unwelcoming to homosexuals, the reality within is more complex, with some supportive voices emerging from liberation, Black, and women’s theologies (Van Klinken & Gunda, 2012). This complexity varies across specific religious denominations: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has criticized his own Anglican church for “persecuting the already persecuted” (quoted in Pigott, 2008), while the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, or NGK), the highly conservative denomination prevalent among White Afrikaners in our research context, has not found a similarly powerful voice to advocate for gay and lesbian inclusion (Leonard, 2012). Research and advocacy work in other contexts has demonstrated considerable room for interpretation of Christian philosophy and doctrine. One UK-based initiative investigating ways to incorporate LGBT equalities work into primary schools was heavily criticized by one Christian organization (DePalma, 2014), while a participating head teacher in one Anglican school reworded her school’s policy statement to explicitly draw on Christian ideals of love and inclusion (DePalma & Atkinson, 2009). In terms of legislation and policy discourses, there seems to be a strong disconnect between the progressive legislation detailed above and education policy, from which sexual diversity is strikingly absent. While there is a specific reference to the South African Constitution in the General Aims section, the constitutional protection of sexual orientation as a protected category is eliminated: Human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice; infusing the principles and practices of social and environmental justice and human rights as defined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The National Curriculum Statement Grades 10–12 (General) is sensitive to issues of diversity such as poverty, inequality, race, gender, language, age, disability and other factors. (Basic Education, 2011a, p. 3)

Given this inconsistency between available legislative and policy discourses, we wondered how teachers would draw on these. While the South African Constitution and other aspects of the national legal framework are quite clear in their support of LGBT rights, educational policy is sufficiently vague to support potential curricular silences as well as inclusion. Teachers may choose to use the strong legislative framework to interpret the policy framework, or not, and in their arguments they may strategically draw on these discourses in a variety of ways to justify their practice, or lack thereof, with respect to sexual diversity. Our research set out to explore how teachers construct themselves as professionals, with a specific focus on how they construct their responsibility


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for teaching about sexual diversity. Our aims can best be described in terms of two overarching research questions: ●


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What and how do South African life orientation (LO) teachers teach about sexual diversity? How do they understand sexual diversity and its relevance to the LO curriculum?

RESEARCH CONTEXT The study consisted of in-depth interviews with 25 South African life orientation teachers. Life orientation is a relatively new subject area in the South African curriculum, part of the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) introduced in 1997. It replaced earlier, non-examinable subjects that included Guidance, Religious and Bible Studies, and Civic, Health, and Physical Education, and it is designed to take a holistic approach to the learners’ personal, social, emotional, and physical growth: Life Orientation is the study of the self in relation to others and to society. It addresses skills, knowledge, and values about the self, the environment, responsible citizenship, a healthy and productive life, social engagement, recreation and physical activity, careers and career choices. These include opportunities to engage in the development and practice of a variety of life skills to solve problems, to make informed decisions and choices and to take appropriate actions to live meaningfully and successfully in a rapidly changing society. It therefore not only focuses on knowledge but also emphasises the importance of the application of skills and values in real-life situations, participation in physical activity, community organisations and initiatives. (Basic Education, 2011a, p. 6)

The subject area is divided into main topics, which differ slightly in the curricular guidelines for grades 7–9 (Basic Education, 2011b) and grades 10–12 (Basic Education, 2011a)4 (see Table 1). Our teachers were selected from the South African province of the Free State, the country’s third largest province. According to 2001 census data, the province was 88% African, 3.1% Coloured, 0.1% Asian, and 8.8% White, with strong economic disparities favoring Whites, particularly between White rural landholders and Blacks and Coloured farm laborers (Provincial DecisionMaking Enabling Project, 2005). It is important to understand the particular history of racial construction in South African: the categories White, African, Coloured, and Asian were those used in the old apartheid system, and they continue to have an impact on the ways in which South Africans define themselves and others.

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TABLE 1 Life orientation topics Grade levels 7–9

Grade levels 10–12

1) Development of the self in society 2) Health, social, and environmental responsibility 3) Constitutional rights and responsibilities 4) Physical education 5) World of work

(i) Development of the self in society (ii) Social and environmental responsibility (iii) Democracy and human rights (iv) Careers and career choices (v) Study skills (vi) Physical education

While our study was not broad enough to provide a representative sample, our sampling technique was purposeful rather than random. We tried to balance representation as best we could, although participation was voluntary. To this end, we interviewed 9 men and 16 women—11 African, 11 White, and 3 Coloured (participants were asked to self-identify)—and selected teachers from both rural and urban schools throughout the Free State. Interviews averaged just over 1 hour in duration and included questions about teachers’ practice, understandings, values, professional training, and personal experiences related to the teaching of sexuality in general and sexual diversity in particular. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed using NVivo 9 software. We will focus here exclusively on the themes related to sexual diversity. The LO curriculum guidelines were also analyzed for grades 7–12, the year groups covered by the teachers in our sample. Interviews were conducted in English. Neither researcher was proficient in any of the other languages claimed by teachers as their home language, and teacher proficiencies in English varied widely. Out of respect for teachers and to facilitate comprehension, some of the hesitations and grammatical and stylistic errors have been cleaned up in the data extracts used in this article. The Ethics Committee at the Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, approved the study. Informed consent was obtained from each of the participants prior to the interview. Also, to protect anonymity for participants in a small sample, we have eliminated references to teachers’ race, school location, and demographic composition of students, except where they were important to understand the context of the statement.

THE UNAVAILABILITY OF POLICY DISCOURSE FOR GUIDING CLASSROOM PRACTICE On the whole, teachers described very little practice involving sexual diversity. This result is not surprising; the lack of clear and explicit policy means



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that teachers cannot draw on this particular authoritative discourse to guide or even to justify classroom practice. Teachers were asked whether or not they taught about homosexuality in the LO classroom. Nine teachers responded that they did not. One of these teachers qualified this absence by noting that the issue of homosexuality might come up in discussions of discrimination (“Not really, but it comes . . . In a way, we just touch on it when we talk about discrimination, human rights”),5 and a few mentioned that although they did not teach it, children might bring up the issue—for example, in lessons about STD prevention. Even when teachers provided an affirmative answer, the actual content of this instruction was unclear and, in some cases, focused on something else altogether. One teacher, for example, went on to define this teaching as a sort of strategic caution, as the presence of children of same-sex parents in the school meant that she had to be careful to not “overstep the line towards those parents.” Another reduced her instruction to informing children that you can contract HIV, even if you are gay. One teacher described this teaching in terms of a few basic definitions—for example, “We will give them the information: That along your way you will find lesbians. You will find homosexuals. You will find people that have got other sexual preferences than usual.” Four teachers described this practice only in terms of responding to learners’ questions or homophobic comments. As one teacher clarified, “We don’t teach, but we do talk about it . . . as something that comes up now and then. But I don’t teach about homosexuality.” Nine teachers described this teaching only in terms of a general argument that we need to learn to get along regardless of whether we are straight or gay. Some of the teachers in this latter group embedded this argument in discussions of tolerance or of human rights, an approach we will analyze more fully in the last section of this article. We asked teachers who claimed to include homosexuality in their LO teaching to provide examples of practice, but not a single teacher provided any concrete examples; responses to these requests were expressed in terms of describing children’s prejudices or expressing their own beliefs about homosexuality. As one teacher put it, his teaching was driven by learner questions, but even then he did not feel confident to respond: Researcher: And do you teach about it? Is sexual diversity part of the syllabus? Do you teach about homosexuality? Teacher: We touch on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues because these are the things that would really come quickly in the minds of learners. We touch on them, but these are some of the things that I don’t have much information on. These are the things that I really feel intimidated to talk about, because I am not confident within myself . . . .

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Researcher: And how has your professional training prepared you to talk about the subject? Teacher: It hasn’t . . . I really am not confident to talk about it because I am not well-informed. I tell [learners with questions] that I’ll go and find out, which I don’t always do.

In terms of preparation and training, it is not surprising that many LO teachers feel ill equipped to address sexual diversity. Most of their professional preparation and experience had been in other areas; for example, all but one participant had been transferred to LO from another subject area, such as biology, English, economic science, Biblical studies, or math. This one participant was the only one to describe any specific education, an Advanced Certificate in Education specializing in LO, but even so, she did not stand out from her colleagues in terms of more developed understanding about sexual diversity or related classroom practice. As we’ve mentioned, the official LO curriculum, established by the South African Department of Basic Education does little to encourage teachers to address sexual diversity. Our analysis of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) for both grades 7–9 and 10–12 (Basic Education, 2011a, 2011b) revealed no mention of sexual diversity, sexual orientation, gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, sexualities (in the plural), gender identity, or trans. Of the five to six broad topics to be covered in the curriculum, we did find two (Development of the Self and Society and Democracy and Human Rights/Constitutional rights and responsibilities6 ) that at least offered a space within which sexual diversity might be addressed—for example, where issues such as bullying, constitutional rights, sexuality, and respect for diversity are described in general terms. Nevertheless, the lack of specificity does little to add to teachers’ tenuous understanding that sexuality education must go beyond the teaching of physical development and prevention of STDs and teenage pregnancy. In fact, our teachers’ responses suggested that the South African educational policy discourse left quite a lot of room for interpretation. Only three teachers believed that sexual orientation (or homosexuality, to use their terminology) formed part of the LO curriculum guidelines or the school’s official LO syllabus. In these cases, teachers were rather vague about policy and its impact on their teaching. One teacher described her implementation of the LO curriculum in rather general terms: “I try to teach my learners to get along with one another irrespective of your sexuality or of your race, or whatever.” Another described sexual orientation as forming part of the curricula for some year groups, but not for the 12th-year students he taught. Other teachers either ignored the possibility of official policy influencing their teaching about sexual orientation or interpreted the curriculum to exclude the topic. This (interpreted) absence from policy was generally not felt to be a problem;


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as one teacher put it, “There hasn’t been a need to and I think that there is so much to cover in the syllabus and those things that you mentioned are not in the syllabus.” One of the teachers who insisted that sexual orientation was included in the LO curriculum provided some insight as to why this might fail to affect local practice: Why do you have to have Life Orientation in the syllabus if you’re not going to follow what the syllabus says—sexuality, sex, homosexuality, careers—and you’re not going to do any of the above? . . . [If] I’m busy doing sexuality in my class, sex and sexuality, and I’m busy discussing topics about gays, lesbians, whatever, and then the principal comes in. What’s next? I need to keep quiet now, until he gets out. You understand?

Another teacher, convinced that there was no policy or guidelines for teaching about sexuality in general, found this to seriously impede her ability to address these issues: “There are no guidelines. There’s no specific . . . I might have stepped over the boundaries a couple of times, which I won’t even know, because there probably aren’t any. So no, there are not a lot of guidelines or strict instructions or fixed lesson plans.” Considering Langton’s (1993) distinction between locutionary silence (what is not said) and illocutionary silencing (the action performed when something is not said), school policy, materials, and practices produce illocutionary silences around sexual diversity by its absence (Sauntson, 2013). Our teachers’ comments suggest that the lack of specific mention in the South African official curriculum, along with teachers’ own prejudices, fears, and lack of training and understanding, largely serve to filter this content out of their actual classroom practice. The absence or vagueness of practice description in teachers’ interviews may also reflect a form of professional self-protection, as they may be reluctant to discuss with interviewers aspects of the curriculum that they consider sensitive or that they are not confident addressing. Nevertheless, many teachers were happy to discuss their understandings of sexual diversity in more general terms, including their pedagogical understandings. In the following section, we will focus on teachers’ own understandings of sexual diversity that may help shape their practice.

UNDERSTANDINGS OF SEXUAL DIVERSITY VIA INACCURATE AND OUTDATED SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSES Earlier research with South African teachers and students has suggested that there might be an overall conceptual tendency to conflate sexuality and sex/gender, which, in turn, reflects early scientific understandings. Lesbians are considered to be masculine, while gay men are considered to


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be feminine in nature. While this tendency is not unique to South African society (Carrera Fernández, Lameiras, & DePalma, 2012), some of the data emerging from this context are particularly striking. Msibi’s (2012) research with queer youth in Black township schools described one teachers’ argument that lesbians should stop wearing pants, as that was the cause of their lesbianism. These gendered assumptions about sexuality are often associated with cross-gendered psychological or physical characteristics, such as the desire to become the other sex or the possession of two sets of genitalia (Francis & Msibi, 2011). The implications of these beliefs go beyond inaccurate understandings and pervasive prejudices to contribute to the nefarious practice of “curative rape,” where rape is justified as a means to cure a lesbian of her gender/sexual dysfunction through forced heterosexual sex. Although there is no clear statistical data that lesbians are at higher risk for rape than are straight women, the dreadful phenomenon of “corrective” or “curative” rape is understood and feared by teachers and students alike to be one of the dangers of being identified as lesbian (Human Rights Watch & The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 2003). We asked our participating LO teachers to define how they understood the term sexual diversity, and we encouraged them to elaborate as much as possible their own understandings of non-heterosexuality. Apart from whether or not and how they addressed homosexuality in their LO curriculum, we wanted to see how they conceptualized sexuality in general, homosexuality in particular, and its relation with physiological and psychological (scientific and popular) discourses. Most teachers expressed some degree of confusion when confronted with the term sexual diversity, suggesting it was not a construct that they had encountered before. This did not mean that they did not recognize more popular terminology such as gay, lesbian, or homosexuality, but it does imply that they did not explicitly understand (non-hetero)sexual orientation as part of natural human diversity. Of the 237 teachers we asked to define their understanding of sexual diversity, eight provided definitions that included an understanding of sexual orientation, or at least made reference to terms such as homosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, or straight, and one even included gender identification (as an issue separate from sexual orientation). Of the 15 teachers who expressed unusual definitions, we did include two who captured the notion of homosexuality, because the perspectives were decidedly not one of sexual diversity. One focused on promiscuity: “No, I don’t like that term. It sounds like being promiscuous, or something. Or homosexuality.” The other prioritized sex acts and seemed to add same-sex relations as an afterthought: “Sexual diversity for me can be, you know, oral sex, hand jobs, or anal sex or whatever. But it can also be for me boys–girls, girls–girls and boys– boys.” The others either responded that they did not know, or they excluded understandings of sexual orientation from definitions that instead involved typologies of sex acts or different cultural and religious beliefs about sex,



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and gender roles. One particularly confusing definition was expressed by a teacher who seemed to confuse bisexuality with transgender: “males and females—I’m not talking about the bisexuals.” In many cases, teachers’ descriptions revealed relatively common associations between gender and sexuality—for example, insisting that they can identify gay learners by their behaviors, preferences, and friend groupings and, in one case, by a learner’s being “more in touch with (his) feminine side.” One teacher, when asked to describe any gay learners, described the case of a boy who wore lipstick and openly declared that he was a girl. These examples suggest that, perhaps like many people, teachers assume that gay and lesbian learners will adopt gender roles corresponding to heteronormative expectations of gay and lesbian identities (DePalma & Atkinson, 2007) and, perhaps, are not clear about the existence of transgender as an identity category. More surprising, however, were some of the discourses that expressed a more profound conflation of sexuality and gender, to the extent that sexual orientation failed to be recognized as a phenomenon in its own right. One teacher declared outright that to be gay, one must be identified as female, explaining that when he grew up, there were no words for lesbian or gay, only “sissy-boy.” Another rejected homosexuality as an impossible category: “The way I was raised as an individual, or as a person: I only knew of the man and the woman. Nothing in between.” This same teacher, in explaining why he did not include homosexuality in the LO curriculum, explicitly identified this as a Christian perspective, “The true Christian has got this perception of: We have the man and the woman, the man and the woman. That’s all.” Sometimes this construction of homosexual as “other” than man or woman was implicit in the simple act of creating separate categories for man, woman, and homosexual; “I will always encourage that we need to accept each other, whether you are a man or a woman, or a homosexual.” This teacher defined homosexuality in terms of atypical gendered feelings and used this as a reason to dismiss the relevance of homosexuality, “I personally do not understand how this issue of gays and lesbian is relevant . . . . Though they will tell you that they have . . . a strong feeling that he’s a woman. The woman characteristics dominate him.” One teacher acknowledged a certain degree of confusion and lack of information concerning the relationship between sexuality and sex/gender, describing a case of a boy she had known as a child who was rumored to have two sets of genitalia. She explained that the suspicion of the boy’s peers was never proven and concluded that she still needs to learn more: “Personally, I don’t know the truth, whether a person has those two sexual . . . maybe as I go on with this life orientation, I must know the human physiology.” Other teachers embraced erroneous scientific discourses with more conviction, and these were sometimes aligned with a sense of a natural, proper sex/gender order that became disrupted in the case of deviant


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sexuality. One teacher blamed the “problem” on a hormonal disorder and claimed to have learned this in his formal schooling, “In Life Sciences we’ve learned that if the genes are not complete, or if estrogen is more than testosterone, and this and that, then that is why we have gays.” Another considered the implications of both biological and psychological factors, “Number one, if the guy was born like this, does he have more XY or XX chromosomes or what’s the reason for it? What is he? Is he a man? Is he a woman? What are his emotions? What is his physical condition about himself? And then we talk about that and that can be a reason for becoming homosexual.” In terms of student and community perceptions, one teacher reported that her learners were often unwilling to believe in the existence of homosexuals, “There’s no such thing, Ma’am. There’s no such thing. If you are a man, you are a man. If you are a girl, you are a girl.” Another teacher reported that some of his learners had learned in their life science class that homosexuality is due to a biological process at the moment of conception. Another teacher described a case where a gay boy was afraid to use the bathroom because his peers had attacked him to examine his genitals: “they put him in a corner where they wanted to see if he has a penis or not.” One teacher reported that mothers of gay boys she had known sometimes assigned them to be the housemaid, to clean and wash the clothes for everyone, on the basis that they had chosen this role for themselves. We were struck by the ways in which some of our teachers’ own views coincided with these popular perceptions: If teachers are not prepared to fully understand the nature of sexual diversity, how can they help learners critically reflect on popular misconceptions they encounter in their own families and communities? Well-meaning teachers who fail to recognize (non-hetero) sexual orientation as a legitimate part of human sexuality, rather than as a physiology or psychological deviation from a natural sex/gender order, may advise lesbians to change their ways to avoid rape, or they may advise children to avoid contact with gay or lesbian peers to avoid contagion (Msibi, 2012). Some of our teachers’ responses provided some insight into this notion of contagion. Only one teacher expressed an understanding of contagion in terms of labeling by association, offering the example of learners who were reluctant to have a gay boy touch them for fear that they, too, might be perceived as gay. We found a more striking tendency among teachers to consider ways in which homosexuality might actually spread among young people. We analyzed teachers’ discourses to clarify exactly what might be perceived as the mechanism of this contagion and discovered that it was closely linked with some teachers’ general disapproval of youth culture as promiscuous and irresponsible: “Gayness I think was a status something: I was bored with this flippen life . . . Mostly there was drugs and alcohol and now group sex and all those things.” Homosexual experimentation was characterized as a particular aspect of this culture: “It’s the new thing that is in now.” While one teacher attributed



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this belief to the learners themselves (“they’ll say there’s not really such a thing as homosexuality. Let me say that it’s a fashion, then they like to be homosexual”), the teacher was not critical of this view, and, in fact, we saw this same discourse expressed directly by several other teachers. Homosexuality was seen as a fad or fashion that no more reflected a sexual orientation than did having sex with multiple partners, having unprotected sex, or experimenting with sexual techniques and positions: “I think they’re experimenting with their sexual orientation, or their individuality . . . They will think they are gay and lesbian, but they’re not really, they’re not really that. It’s just like a phase, I think.” Although one teacher described cases of former students who were (really) lesbians, she revealed implicit assumptions by distinguishing these genuine cases from other, less serious lesbians who were seeking social status, “I know serious girlfriends that they’ve been committed to for the last two or three years. And having a relationship with them and . . . So, I mean, it’s not just talk and for the social status. It’s really . . . They are homosexual.” Particularly interesting in this example is the association of a stable relationship with a lesbian identity; carried to its logical conclusion, heterosexual women who have not been in a committed relationship for two or three years would not be considered heterosexual. Another teacher expressed a similar division between the kind of homosexuality that is “in the blood” and others who “are following fashion.” Even the teacher cited above who associated gayness with drugs, alcohol, and group sex was careful to distinguish between “the wrong side of gayness, where I’m doing it just for fun” with real gayness, which a person is born with and cannot change. Another teacher reported a case of a group of lesbian girls who were highly admired by the rest of the learners for their rebellious attitudes: “there’s this gang of lesbian girls, which is getting bigger. They are, like, very in, popular . . . . It started last year, and [the headmaster] said, ‘No, let’s just not pay a lot of attention to it, because then we make it, like, more popular. Like, they want attention and then we focus on them. Let’s see if it won’t go away by itself.’” Only one teacher characterized the increasing visibility of homosexuality in youth culture in potentially positive terms; she cited a recently popular song (Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” released in 2008) as contributing to children’s openness about sexuality (“has created a little more openness about gay, lesbian and bisexual discussions and I allow it as they are questioning and this is what sexuality education is all about”). This teacher also criticized some popular media for reinforcing negative and harmful stereotypes. She described an incident on a popular soap opera involving a “curative rape,” and her learners’ reactions: “And they will come up with those things in the classes and they will say [that] in the media they see that if a lesbian girl gets raped, she will be straight.” By contrast, in most cases, homosexuality itself (the fashionable kind) was characterized as a sort of contagion that spreads through modern evils


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such as television, films, and the Internet: “I don’t know if it’s on video games, or PC games, or TV. I don’t know, because I don’t watch that. I’m not exposed to that.” As one teacher argued, children must be protected against information about homosexuality that they are finding more and more easily on their own via popular media: “the Internet today and Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff . . . Some of them even experience it, which in my days and I don’t know about your days, it wasn’t like that.” These two reflections also reveal another key factor in this definition of contagion of homosexuality through youth culture: the teachers themselves are (happily) immune, as they do not participate in the same culture as the children of today. In a sense, this is a construction of a gay agenda that specifically targets children in the production of gay popular youth culture.

RELIGIOUS AND CONSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSES SHAPE APPROACHES TO TEACHING ABOUT SEXUAL DIVERSITY Aside from direct and indirect references to scientific understandings of sexuality and the presence or absence of policy regarding sexual diversity, teachers drew on two other authoritative discourses: religion (Christianity in all specified cases, or some more general reference to God or church) and a human rights discourse that explicitly drew on the ultimate legislative power of the South African Constitution. Of the 25 teachers interviewed, 18 explicitly referred to the teachings of God/the church, their religious upbringing, or their participation in church-related activities, despite the fact that the interviewers did not ask about religion. As we have described earlier, mainstream Christianity among White Afrikaners has taken an intolerant stance toward homosexuality, while African (Black) Christian denominations have largely cast homosexuality as not only sinful but as un-African (Msibi, 2011). These mainstream discourses are hegemonic but certainly not monolithic in the South African context, which enables some teachers with strong religious views to reconcile their religious beliefs with human rights discourses. Some teachers declared without reservation that their Christian beliefs should, and did, guide their teaching, “You must really have a strong belief in what the Bible teaches us to do”; “The intention of God is unpacked as the syllabus develops.” Others, on the other hand, felt that they must separate their personal beliefs from their teaching, “Not everyone is believing in the same God as I believe, and I must respect that.” One teacher poignantly described the tension between the conservative moral and religious views that derive from her upbringing in the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK) and the pedagogical imperative to adopt a broader perspective in teaching about sexuality:


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I’m an Afrikaans, NG girl. So my view of that is very conservative. And I think that’s probably going to influence the way that I teach the subject. I think LO is supposed to be a subject where you’re very open-minded about religion, and sexuality, and so forth. And it might influence the way that I think about that. So it’s very difficult to separate one’s personal values from one’s teaching.

As mentioned earlier, the South African constitution clearly extends legal recognition and protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The LO curriculum encourages the study of these constitutional rights as an official part of the LO curriculum, particularly in topic 3, Democracy and Human Rights, and, in fact, this intent is listed as one of the seven specific aims of the LO subject area: “expose learners to their constitutional rights and responsibilities, to the rights of others and to issues of diversity” (Basic Education, 2011a, p. 7). Although any explicit reference to sexual diversity has been filtered out in the actual wording of the curriculum materials, the strong emphasis on the constitution does suggest that teachers should interpret human rights as defined by the constitution itself. For example, the curriculum for grade 10 includes the topic “diversity; discrimination; human rights and violations: race; religion; culture; language; gender; age; rural/ urban; xenophobia; human trafficking and HIV and AIDS status” (Basic Education, 2011a, p. 9). While no mention is made of sexual orientation in this otherwise comprehensive list, the South African constitution is listed as a recommended resource. Six teachers in our sample did make explicit reference to the constitution or to human rights (which we interpreted to imply their guarantee by the South African constitution). They drew on the highest legislative authority of the nation to frame the teaching of sexual diversity within a human rights discourse. As with Christianity, this discourse was highly personalized in some cases: Some teachers spoke passionately about their constitution, and its ideals seemed even to shape understandings. For example, one teacher drew on the constitutional protection of gender and sexual orientation to construct his very definition of sexual diversity: Nothing prohibits me. And the constitution says there can’t be any discrimination. They are all equal. Even my sexual orientation. So I can go for a sex change. Or if I like men, nothing is wrong. That’s why we have same-sex marriages, because based on equality. All men are the same. And this is what I use, these kinds of examples, to explain sexual diversity . . . I believe in democracy.

As we have seen, there is little in the curriculum guidelines to encourage such an understanding, and this teacher, like his colleagues, has had no relevant formal training. In the following section, we will look at some of


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the ways in which teachers drew on these four major authoritarian discourses to construct philosophies of pedagogy with respect to sexual diversity, even in the majority of cases where no actual teaching practices were apparent. While we were unable to elicit much actual description of practice, teachers did expound at length on their own beliefs, beliefs of students, the kinds of discussions they had in the classroom, and what they imagined the goal of teaching about homosexuality might be. Based on their moral convictions that were rooted in broader religious, scientific, and legal discourses, teachers formulated various approaches to teaching about homosexuality. We have organized these into three major categories: therapy/disorder, tolerance/misfortune, and human rights/diversity. Although most teachers were reasonably consistent, some did not always fall neatly into one exclusive category. They sometimes expressed views that blurred their distinctions and that seemed, in some cases, contradictory. For that reason, we will look at teachers’ comments as the unit of analysis, rather than individual teachers themselves.

Therapy/Disorder This approach draws strongly on certain scientific discourses that cast nonheterosexuality and gender nonconformity as deviance or disorder. Teachers cast themselves in the role of therapists, whose job was to cure homosexuals, or at least to keep children healthy by remaining heterosexual: We gave counseling and therapy as with any other emotional problem. It could be a phase, you are still a teenager, don’t make decisions now. It has happened that girls have had therapy, and they were molested, and they hadn’t dealt with it, and they were straight now. Actually one of our homosexual girls just had a baby and she is now married, so she went the other way.

This teacher draws on her understanding that, at least in some cases, homosexuality is a kind of contagion that one can contract from peer culture, an understanding she shared with several of the teachers in our study. Another teacher, by contrast, considered homosexuality to more of a permanent disorder, which might be more easily prevented than cured. She offered a range of possible causative factors that included absent fathers, lesbian mothers, alcohol use, and the media: The one family that I do know, its two sisters, and they are both lesbian, because they don’t have a good role model in their father. And their mother is also lesbian. So it’s in their family. They have a father, but he’s always . . . He’s using alcohol and he doesn’t show any love to them. So they hate men. They are very clear about that. They don’t like boys.


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And I think if it’s in a family, and they see it, and they see but my mother is also lesbian, and so on, so I must . . . Maybe I’m also one.


Another teacher offered a similar set of causes but seemed particularly focused on the influence of dysfunctional families in the production of gay and lesbian youth: I must go and see who can do research on that, because there’s definitely more children being homosexual much earlier in life . . . . There’s definitely something in relation to parents’ relationships. And most of them come out of failed marriages: Parents who are divorced or had different relationships. Multi-relationships with other people and still in the marriage . . . . And a lot of those children, a few of them tend to go homosexual . . . That’s why parents must be educated, and the children.

Some teachers sought not only psychological but also biological explanations for homosexuality. As one teacher explained, his training in psychology prepared him to understand homosexuality, “The study of Psychology has helped me a lot, particularly first year when one was studying about the human body, the neurological functions of the human body, hormones and genetics.” Whether through pseudo-psychology or pseudo-science, teachers drew on science as the authoritative discourse that rendered homosexuality a medical disorder, although the scientific references recalled by these teachers are vague and incomplete at best and, as we have described earlier, tend to confuse sex/gender and sexuality. Some of these teachers also drew on a particular religious discourse that considered homosexuality to be a sin. One teacher in particular offered a detailed analysis of homosexuality, its causes, and possible treatments drawing on discourses of physiology, psychology, and religion to create a systematic, three-pronged approach: We’re based on Christian morals at the school. We think it’s wrong. But we go back to the three reasons that, or the three factors that explain it. So the main thing is: Number one, if the guy was born like this, does he have more XY or XX chromosomes or what’s the reason for it? . . . Now, that is almost excusable, if you can talk about it, because the person didn’t create himself. That’s what he got dealt with, or that’s what he grew up with. And the other one is if he was molested we talk about it. Then it was done to him. So he probably only knows this. And then he does it to another . . . .Then the third one is, well, if you focus on it. And you’re unsure of yourself; you must go back to what is said about you out of the Word. Who are you created? You are created in God’s image and that you’re a man and stuff like this. And then we convince him, because mainly they are confused at a young age, about homosexuality, but if you explain it to him correctly . . .

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In terms of practice, the therapy/disorder approach has implications that resonate with discredited psychological practices such as “reparative therapy” for homosexuals. These teachers share with such therapists a conviction that homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured with proper education or therapy, and the distinction between the two disciplines seems to blur here. Such approaches draw heavily on a scientific discourse of disease and treatment, albeit one that predates modern standards of practice advocated by professional organizations such as the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association.

Tolerance/Misfortune This approach draws on similar religious and pseudo-scientific discourses, but here the conviction that homosexuality can be cured or prevented gives way to an additional religious discourse of tolerance. Some of our teacher expressed ambivalence over curative or conversion methodologies, even when they had expressed an understanding homosexuality as a sin or disorder. For example, one teacher described a poster that she had put on her wall that depicted the Christian’s choice: two roads, a narrow one leading to heaven and a broad one leading to hell, with a Bible verse advocating violence toward homosexuals (who apparently have chosen the wrong road): I have a poster in my class. You know that one, the narrow road and the broad road . . . the one leading to hell and the one leading to heaven . . . And then underneath it’s all the verses in the Bible. And once, that was very awkward, when I finished about five minutes early, before the bell rang. And then two of the boys asked me if they can go read at the, what’s under the poster, written at the bottom. I said yes. I mean, wonderful. It’s about the Bible, go read. And then they read out loud, it’s a verse in the Bible about homosexuality that says: “Throw them with stones,” I think. And they read that out loud. And the one girl sitting in that class was a lesbian. So then I was uncomfortable and I said: “No, that’s the old testament,” and so on, and so on. And I didn’t quite know what to do. I tried to handle it by saying it’s the old testament and we are not the judges, and so on.

These teachers drew on a similar understanding of homosexuality as a sin or disorder but were not so strongly convinced that homosexuality can be cured by religious, psychological, or medical intervention. Homosexuality continues to be seen as a problem, “Yes. Unfortunately, you know, we have, sometimes we have problems, because we do have homosexual learners at school.” This same teacher considered homosexuality to be a kind of character flaw (“we also need to understand that we all have the strengths and


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weaknesses”), while other teachers compared homosexuality to smoking, disability, and even car theft, “Who am I to judge? If you’re gay or if you steal somebody’s car. You understand what I’m saying?” Instead of treatment, a kind of tolerance is advocated. This philosophy draws on a different religious discourse—the Christian teaching that we must not judge our fellow man: I hope it never happens to one of my children. Because our ethos is Christian, you know, I say the bible is against it. But I’ll never judge and I don’t want to go into the debate of are you born that way or do you become that way, you know, it’s beyond me. All I know is I won’t judge and I hope it never happens to one of my children.

Homosexuality is considered to be a serious misfortune that might befall anyone. This teachers’ fear of homosexuality is so great that she repeats twice her hope that such misfortune never befalls one of her own children, and this juxtaposition of tolerance and terror is intimately tied with yet another popular understanding of homosexuality—that they cannot help it. Several teachers were very clear in their conviction that homosexuals did not, and certainly nobody would, choose to be gay. One teacher quoted her gay friend, “he once said to me: ‘If I had a choice, I would’ve been straight.’”

Human Rights/Diversity This approach was characterized by some reference to the South African constitution in particular and human rights discourses in general. In some cases these discourses were tempered by a notion of tolerance that explicitly or sometimes implicitly drew on religious discourses (such as the notion of not judging). As we have seen earlier, some teachers distinguished between fashionable homosexuality and real (congenital, unavoidable) homosexuality, and this understanding seemed crucial in the deployment of tolerance. Indeed, one teacher who drew on constitutional rights was quick to add this element of lack of control to her justification: They will tell you that this thing of homosexuality is wrong, but my duty is to show them we must follow our constitution that we are equal. Everybody is equal in South Africa, because you . . . There is something that you don’t like. That person he is the way, she is the way they are. We mustn’t judge. We do have them, the homosexual . . . students. We don’t have a problem, because they did not choose to be like that.

Such arguments that deploy a human rights/constitutional discourse tempered with a tolerance discourse that casts sexual diversity as an unavoidable misfortune fail to comprehend the constitutional rendering of sexual diversity


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as an aspect of social diversity meant to be embraced, along with racial, religious, and other aspects of South Africa’s multicultural heritage. Indeed, at least one teacher expressed her concern that these rights might be counterproductive, as they give children the idea that they can do “whatever they want.” This concern resonates with a comment made by one gay youth about his teacher’s belief that “It’s these rights that are making us like we are” (Msibi, 2012, p. 525). Nevertheless, given the power of South Africa’s constitution to recast homosexuality from disorder or misfortune into diversity to be protected and perhaps even celebrated, we found any teacher’s reference to the constitution to be encouraging. Of the 25 teachers interviewed, six referred directly to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or to the legal protection of human rights when they discussed their role in teaching about homosexuality. Two more made more oblique references to freedoms and protections: “We all have the right to life, to freedom, and to movement”; “Freedom of religion, culture, you name it.” Of the teachers who specifically alluded to the South African constitution, at least one teacher detached his understanding from that of tolerance for the afflicted: “I can’t tell [gay and lesbian people] that they are wrong, because what does our constitution say? I have the right to choose.” One teacher contrasted her earlier, negative beliefs about homosexuality with her current pedagogical understanding, and largely credited the sociopolitical changes in South Africa for her shift in philosophy: Teacher: We thought homosexuality is a disgrace, it’s a sin, it is something that you will degrade and you will tease everybody about it, and it’s a big negative thing. That was when I was at school. Researcher: And it sounds like between then and now something happened. Teacher: Yes, an eye opener. Thank you Lord for that. Researcher: What was it? Teacher: It’s really because I’m teaching black kids. And it’s the new South Africa. I know now what it means to be having a democratic idea in society. And we have workshops about human rights. And I never want to go back to that old way of thinking. It was narrow-minded.

IMPLICATIONS The inclusion of LGBT experiences in the curriculum would help to provide visibility for these collectives, as well as a more comprehensive education for all students. Although other subject areas, such as history and literature, might be broadened to include LGBT contributions and struggles, the most obvious place for inclusion would be within the LO curriculum:


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One approach . . . is basing small group discussions (for homosexual and heterosexual learners) around two videos: The Matthew Shepard Story (focusing on homophobia and hate crimes), and Beautiful Thing (a UK based video which captures the coming out experiences of two gay teenagers). Life Skills training around issues of sexuality education needs to utilize an eclectic range of sources (for example, videos, guest speakers, other “out” young gay and lesbian people, music, amongst others) to provide relevant information for learners. (Butler et al., 2003, p. 20)

In fact, some of our teachers, speaking more broadly about their teaching needs in general, suggested that they be provided with ongoing training, workshops, materials, and specific lesson plans as a way to facilitate the teaching of a subject area for which very few teachers have been specifically trained. Following the recommendation that educators collaborate with LGBT organizations (Polders & Wells, 2004), groups of educators and LGBT groups might work together to produce lesson plans and materials and situate their relevance within the LO curriculum, most particularly in the two areas of Development of the Self and Society and Democracy and Human Rights/Constitutional Rights and Responsibilities. For example, one LO curricular topic for grade 9 is the celebration of national and international days. While the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO, May 17) is not listed among the specific suggestions, the date commemorates the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s May 1990 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The inclusion of this event would open up possibilities for critically examining earlier and modern scientific discourses concerning sexuality, illness, and human rights. Other topics, such as “Bullying and rebellious behavior” (Grade 7) and “Types of relationships” (Grade 10) offer opportunities to include sexual diversity in discussions of various relevant issues. In addition to exploring the particular authoritative discourse that regulates their practice in the form of the LO curriculum, we recommend inviting teachers to explore the other authoritative discourses that they consider relevant to their approaches to teaching about sexual diversity. This may mean clarifying scientific discourses, which seem to appear in our participants’ discursive repertoires as, at best, poorly recalled and interpreted. Religion seems to play an important role in many teachers’ lives, and while some of our teachers seem willing to suspend their religious convictions in the classrooms, some are not. This suggests that teachers must be encouraged to explicitly wrestle with their own religious perspectives and plan ways to reconcile their church’s authority with their own authoritative positions as educators. Sexual diversity, along with other forms of diversity, is, in fact, protected in the South African Constitution and encoded in many legal protections.

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Teachers must understand the nature of this legal framework and its pedagogical implications. Given the importance of other key authoritative discourses in teachers’ constructions of their personal and professional philosophies, pre-service and in-service training aimed at providing more complete understandings of these discourses might be a good place to start. Such a module might include the following sessions: 1. Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Understanding Key Concepts in Human Development 2. Science and Sexuality: A Historical Perspective 3. Sexual Diversity in International and Historical Contexts 4. Human Rights, Law, and Sexual Diversity 5. Religion, Culture, and Sexual Diversity 6. Sexual Diversity in the Media 7. South African Life Orientation Educational Policy: The Self and Society; Democracy and Human Rights 8. Lesson Planning Strategies: Methodology and Resources These policy and training suggestions are specific to South African LO teachers and are based on our research findings, but we recommend similar processes in other national contexts. In general, this process might involve: ● ●

●

●

A review of national and local legislative framework regarding LGBT rights An analysis of curriculum guidelines to find out where teaching about sexual diversity might be addressed Teaching interviews and classroom observations to better understand practice and philosophies with regard to teaching about sexual diversity The design of lesson planning guides and materials, as well as pre- and in-service training for teachers

Teaching banks of lesson plans—for example, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) K–12 Curricula and Lesson Plans in the US (n.d.), or Schools OUT’s Classroom Collection in the UK (n.d.)—can be a useful source of materials that can be adapted to teachers’ particular contexts. We also recommend that teachers be involved as fully as possible in the process. This may take the form of participatory action research, such as the No Outsiders project in the UK, or the production of video documentaries of teaching practice (Chasnoff, 1996). As a final note, we find the South African legislative discourse to be a powerful yet underutilized tool for teaching about sexual diversity. Our teachers who spoke most clearly and passionately about their responsibility for incorporating sexual diversity into the LO curriculum were those who considered the South African Constitution to be their highest authority.


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Teachers should be helped to understand the legislative framework in which they live and teach and should engage in reflection and debate about how this authority interacts with the other authoritative discourses relevant to their professional lives to guide their classroom practice.


NOTES 1. The author criticizes essentialized media discourses around the phenomenon for reinforcing racist and heterosexist simplifications, “‘Corrective rape’ should be situated within an understanding of homophobia, sexism and racism as interlocking systems of oppression which operate together to control, through violence and terror, women who happen to be Black, happen to be lesbian and happen to be from townships.” 2.Homosexuality as a disorder was removed in 1973, but it was replaced with the more specific new diagnosis, ego-dystonic homosexuality for the 1980 edition of the DSM, which was subsequently removed altogether from the 1986 version (Herek, 2012). 3.The decision was taken by the General Assembly on May 17, which is now celebrated as the International Day Against Homophobia (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersexual Association, 2005). 4.The South African school system runs from Reception through grade 12. 5.We considered this to be a negative response, rather than a positive response, because the teachers initial response was “no,” and she does not suggest this inclusion to be a systematic part of the human rights aspect of the curriculum. 6.The topic is called Constitutional rights and responsibilities for grades 7–9 and Democracy and Human Rights for years 10–12. 7.Two participants did not receive this exact question, but it became apparent through their interviews that sexual diversity did not form part of their LO teaching, and they both declared that they had received no education about “homosexuality.”

REFERENCES Amnesty International. (2012, October). Blog: South Africa’s townships still not safe for gay, lesbian and transgender people. Retrieved from http://www. amnesty.org/en/news/blog-south-africas-townships-still-not-safe-gay-lesbianand-transgender-people-2012-10-05 Associated Press. (2012). California bans “gay cure” therapy. CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57523211/californiabans-gay-cure-therapy/ Astbury, G., & Butler, A. H. (2005). South Africa: LGBT issues. In J. Sears (Ed.), Youth, education, and sexualities: An international encyclopedia (pp. 810–814). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Basic Education. (2011a). Grades 10–12 Life orientation curriculum and assessment policy statement. Republic of South Africa, Department of Basic Education. Basic Education. (2011b). Grades 7–9 Life orientation curriculum and assessment policy statement. Republic of South Africa, Department of Basic Education. Butler, A. H., Alpaslan, A. H., Strümpher, J., & Astbury, G. (2003). Gay and lesbian youth experiences of homophobia in South African secondary


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When selves have sex: what the phenomenology of trans sexuality can teach about sexual orientation.

Teaching sexuality in Brazilian medical schools.

The gendered nature of South African teachers' discourse on sex education.

South African foundation phase teachers' perceptions of ADHD at private and public schools.

Early Life Growth Predicts Pubertal Development in South African Adolescents.

Teaching the Teachers of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

"I'm not ashamed to talk on it!": African-American women's decisions about cervical cancer prevention and control in South Carolina.

Learning about Teaching.

Knowledge and Attitudes about Basic Life Support among Secondary School Teachers in Al-Qassim, Saudi Arabia.

Incontinence and sexuality in later life.

What do school teachers know about asthma?

The implementation of the South African Triage Score (SATS) in an urban teaching hospital, Ghana.

The accuracy of radiology speech recognition reports in a multilingual South African teaching hospital.

Teaching About "Brain and Learning" in High School Biology Classes: Effects on Teachers' Knowledge and Students' Theory of Intelligence.

Work-Life Balance? It Is Not about Balance, but Priorities.

Teenage sexuality, HIV risk, and the politics of being "duted": perceptions and dynamics in a South African township.

Black South african lesbians.

Teaching about sexually transmitted diseases.

Teaching technicians about animal research.

Teaching medical students about alcohol.

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