| Summary: | Sexuality education is a contested arena in which multiple sexual discourses compete
for dominance. These discourses have the potential to empower or marginalize students (and
teachers) based on constructed social identity categories. The purpose of this study was
twofold: to determine which sexual discourses are reflected in British Columbia's
secondary-level instructional resource packages (IRPs) that address sexuality issues, and a
selection of their recommended learning resources; and to explore how the sexual discourses
inherent in these documents construct or perpetuate social inequalities through the
positioning of sexual subjects according to gender, sexual orientation, age, race, class and
physical (dis)ability. The selected IRPs were Career and Personal Planning, 8-12; Science 8-
10; Biology, 11-12; Home Economics, 8-10; and Home Economics 11-12. The selected
recommended learning resources were AIDS: Allie's Story (video); Biology: The Unity and
Diversity of Life, Eighth Edition (textbook); and The Living Family: A Canadian Perspective
(textbook).
The relevant curricula were subjected to a critical discourse analysis informed by both
critical feminism and a pragmatic, Foucauldian theory of discourse. This analysis was
carried out using sexual discourse categories developed by Alexander McKay (1998) and a
set of open-ended questions derived from several sources.
The results of the analysis suggest that the selected curricula and recommended
learning resources adhere for the most part to Romanticist and/or Progressive sexual
discourses, employing sub-discourses of danger, control and individual responsibility.
Related to these discourses is the texts' marginalization of the reader or viewer, primarily on
the basis of sexual orientation and gender, but also significantly on the basis of age, race,
class and physical disability. It is argued that the documents examined have the potential for
perpetuating stereotypical identity constructions and social inequalities through the lens of
sexuality. Recommendations for future curriculum development are included.
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