Sentidos e significados da educação sexual e da sexualidade para estudantes e professoras/res de escolas públicas

Abstract

This dissertation aims to comprehend the meanings and significance of sex education for high school students and teachers in full-time public schools in the eastern region of Goiânia, Goiás. It presents itself as a qualitative investigation, using Historical Dialectical Materialism as the method of scientific inquiry and Vygotskian theory as the theoretical and conceptual basis, seeking to answer the following problem: What are the senses and meanings of sexual education and sexuality for young students and teachers in full-time public high schools in the city of Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil? As methodological procedures, 32 semi-structured interviews were conducted, with 9 teachers and 23 young students from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades of high school in three full-time public schools located in the eastern region of Goiânia, Goiás. The nuclei of meaning were used as a procedure for reading, analyzing, and systematizing the material collected in the empirical research. The work was divided into four chapters, and presented, respectively, the state of knowledge of scientific productions about sex education in Brazilian universities, public policies on sex education and sexuality in Brazil in the educational context, and the meanings and significance of sex education and sexuality for teachers and young students. The speeches of teachers and young students showed similar, complementary and contradictory results. It was concluded that there are public policies that validate the work in sex education by teachers, but that schools alone, without the support of other institutions and social agents, cannot develop continuous actions in the exercise of sex education practice. The statements of the interviewees indicate an interest in studying and deepening the proposed theme, considering that sexuality is an aspect of human life that begins before birth and accompanies them until the end. Therefore, it is understood that actions and activities with a focus on sex education in public space are not only possible but necessary and urgent to promote prevention of unwanted pregnancy in youth, combat violence and sexually transmitted infections, and guarantee sexual and reproductive health and safety rights