SEXUALITY EDUCATION Eva S. Goldfarb Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences College of Education and Human Services Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ
[email protected] Norman A. Constantine Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA, and School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA
[email protected] To appear in: B.B. Brown & M. Prinstein (Eds.). (2011). Encyclopedia of adolescence. NY: Academic Press. REVISED: January 9, 2011 1 Synopsis Sexuality education comprises the lifelong intentional processes by which people learn about themselves and others as sexual, gendered beings from biological, psychological and socio-cultural perspectives. It takes place through a potentially wide range of programs and activities in schools, community settings, religious centers, as well as informally within families, among peers, and through electronic and other media. Sexuality education for adolescents occurs in the context of the biological, cognitive, and social-emotional developmental progressions and issues of adolescence. Formal sexuality education falls into two main categories: behavior change approaches, which are represented by abstinence-only and abstinence-plus models, and healthy sexual development approaches, represented by comprehensive sexuality education models. Evaluations of program effectiveness, largely based on the outcomes of behavior change models, provide strong evidence that abstinence-only programs are ineffective, and mixed