Colloque Efficacité et équité en éducation

Sex education: teachers ’ and future teachers ’ conceptions and social representations; what relevance for teachers ’ training? Education à la sexualité: représentations sociales et conceptions d'enseignants et futurs enseignants, incidences sur les pratiques et la formation? This paper presents the results of a questionnaire about teachers ’ and pre-teachers ’ representations coming from 17 countries (Europe, Africa, Middle-East) include in the European FP6 Biohead-Citizen research project which aims to understand how health and sex education can contribute to improving citizenship. School Sex Education is nowadays an important public health issue as it concerns not only youth AIDS prevention (and other sexually transmitted infections) and adolescent pregnancy prevention but also interpersonal relationships and psychosocial issues. Therefore school appears the best place to improve sex education and contributes to promote better citizenship. Questionnaire analyses the social representations and practices of teachers in several countries, focusing on their differences and associating them to controlled parameters (e.g. social context, religion, gender). In this communication we analyze data concerning teachers ’ and future teachers’ conceptions on the topic of sex education derived from a questionnaire that was constructed and tested durin