Teachers can play an important role in students’ healthy relational and sexual development. They can pay attention to this subject with specifically designed lessons. But it’s even more important to address relational and sexual development within the general curriculum, whenever the topic comes up in class. Discussing about sexuality is not always easy. This document provides practical tips for teachers for discussing sexuality in the classroom.
CC-BY Nurse Education Today, 2021, January Background: Although older adults are sexual, sexuality is infrequently discussed with them by health care professionals. Nursing students, as future professionals, can make an important contribution by developing competences in discussing intimacy and sexuality with older adults to increase quality of life and to prevent sexual problems. In order to improve these competences, current levels of knowledge and attitude need to be explored. Objectives: To investigate i) knowledge and attitudes of nursing students regarding intimacy and sexuality of older adults, ii) the difference in knowledge and attitudes of nursing students in different years of study and iii) frequency of discussing intimacy and sexuality with older adults. Design: Cross-sectional. Settings: A University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Participants: Nursing students, ≥16 years who were able to read and write in Dutch. Methods: The Ageing Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Scale was used among nursing students. Furthermore, demographic information and frequencies were collected. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Results: In total, 732 students participated. The mean knowledge-score was 43.9 (SD = 8.9), the mean attitudescore 64.3 (SD = 16.0). Unlike attitude, the level of knowledge differed significantly per year of study: first year students had the lowest and third year students the highest knowledge. Most students stated they ‘never’ (54.1%) or ‘once’ (13.2%) discussed intimacy and sexuality with older adults. Reasons to avoid talking about intimacy and sexuality were feelings of ‘not being the right person’ (17.3%) and ‘incompetence’ (14.0%). Conclusions: Nursing students had moderate knowledge and positive attitudes toward older adults’ intimacy and sexuality. The knowledge-level differed per year of study, the attitude level did not. Only a minority discussed intimacy and sexuality with older adults. Moderate knowledge and positive attitudes do not mean that intimacy and sexuality is discussed. To ensure students feel responsible and competent, interventions should focus on continuous knowledge dissemination, role clarification and role modelling.
MULTIFILE
The project Decolonising Education: from Teachers to Leading Learners (DETeLL) aims to develop a multi-site approach for interventions towards inclusion and decolonisation in order to change the hierarchical nature of higher education in the Netherlands. DETeLL identifies the model of the ‘traditional teacher’ as embodying the structural exclusions and discriminations built into the classroom and proposes the figure of a ‘Leading Learner’ as a first step towards a radical change in the educational system. In collaboration with the education departments in the Theatre and Dance Academy at ArtEZ, the post-doc will build up a research and teaching programme that engages with students and teachers in the faculty to create a prototype of an inclusive and diverse educational practice. RELEVANCE: Education should be the critical space in which changes occur in order to shape best possible futures. In DETeLL’s acceptation, decolonisation refers to a complete change in the way of thinking and behaving. It does not refer only to the urgency of dealing with historical colonial legacies embedded in society, but also to the subversion of the deeply oppressive colonial culture that (also unconsciously) regulates public and private living, whether this is related to gender, race, class or sexuality issues. RESULTS: 1) Create a theory and practice-based scientific base-line of decolonisation and art education; 2) Provide a definition of ‘Artist educator as Leading Learner’ following a practice- based methodology of intervention; 3) Design and Pilot a new teaching programme for theatre education at ArtEZ to be then upscaled to all educational departments in a follow-up project); 4) Produce a strong interdisciplinary and international output plan: 3 academic publications, 2 conferences, 4 expert group workshops. NETWORK: ArtEZ; University of Amsterdam (UvA); Ghent University; UCHRI; Hildesheim University; Cape Town University. The partners will serve as steering committee through planned expert group meetings.
