Consent in Sex Education: Teacher Perspectives on Teaching Consent in the Updated Health and Physical Education Curriculum

Explicit discussions about consent have been missing from Canadian sex education and have the potential to enable students to have difficult conversations about their limits, boundaries and desires in intimate relationships. Although consent is now expected to be taught by Ontario teachers in elementary and high schools due to the recent Health and Physical Education curriculum update, a thorough review revealed that ‘consent’ is undefined in the document. Teachers are potentially left to conceptualize and interpret the meaning of consent without any clear guidelines as to what it really is and how to teach it to students of various ages. This research study employed a qualitative research approach consisting of a review of the relevant literature about the topic, as well as in-person, semi-structured interviews with two Ontario Health and Physical Education teachers. Through the data analysis, four main themes emerged that highlight connections between teacher practice and current research. These themes centre on teacher recognition of the importance of teaching consent to the lives of students and how teachers teach consent differently by gender. They highlight the difficulties teachers face in understanding consent and translating the meaning of consent into language their students can understand, pointing to the need for additional support and resources in the teaching of consent