They main objective of our qualitative research was to describe teaching and learning experiences of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in special schools in Río Negro, Argentina. In this article we share some results regarding the singularities that CSE adopts in special schools. We also recover pedagogical experiences that deeply challenge us and invite us to redefine entrenched conceptions regarding the sexuality of people with disabilities. We analyze their vulnerable situation in the current political context, which not only devalues CSE as a public educational policy but also discriminates against people with disabilities through the use of humiliating terms in regulations, actions, and discourse. We add the possibility of thinking about how the notion of rights is manipulated from an individualistic and meritocratic perspective that fosters stigmatizing attitudes towards certain social groups. We propose resisting the advance of prevailing cruelty with a loving pedagogy that approaches an anti ableist CSE. In times of “backward" policies, we propose going for more CSE.
This article aims to provide an overview of the historical process of constructing Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) in Argentina and the need to incorporate a masculinities perspective. This approach aims to problematize the hegemonic model of masculinity that reaffirms male domination, as promoted by neoconservative sectors. In other words, it enables the possibility of conceptualizing and embodying masculinities in alternative ways. The analysis is situated within the national context of antifeminist backlash and the reaffirmation of neoconservative discourses and practices by various right-wing actors, which reinforce the perceived need to restore a masculinity eroded by the advancement of feminist policies. The article is structured as follows: first, it presents a brief historical overview and assessment of the transformations in the legal framework, educational proposals, pedagogical perspectives, and implementation strategies of this right during the early years of CSE, marked by disputes with neoconservative sectors. Second, it characterizes the dissemination and reach of neoconservative discourses and the antifeminist backlash up to the present. Finally, it examines the field of masculinity studies and highlights their contributions, which can serve to enrich the pedagogical perspective of CSE.
The implementation of policies in institutions involves creative, interactive and unstable processes that are resignified in relation to the particularities of the context and the subjects. Hence, in the view that we propose here, this set of practices conforms to a kaleidoscopic vision, in the sense of the multiplicity of subjects, dynamics and textures that are configured in the processes of interpretation and translation. Secondary schools develop different strategies that allow students to be accompanied, taking into account the inclusive meaning of the system and the mandatory nature of the level. To do this, reinterpretations are articulated, in this case of the academic regime, with the role of the teacher - tutor, which allows a view focused on the difficulties of the students. We present here some results of a qualitative design research that recovers the perspective of the subjects of the schools and how they develop devices that are institutionally designed to sharpen the gaze, put the focus on the lives of the students and personalize proposals that not only involve the pedagogical, but are installed in a more comprehensive sense of containment and training.
This article analyzes the positions of technical-teaching staff within Uruguay’s formal education system regarding Sexual Education (SE) during 2020-2024. Contrary to national history, it was the first time the Sexual Education Program remained in force under a government that was not its original promoter. To explore how SE is incorporated in this context and analyze technical-teaching positions, the article uses a qualitative methodology based on documentary analysis of the records from the Technical-Teaching Assemblies of three subsystems. Historical tradition shows that during the so-called progressive era, SE became established in the symbolic and discursive fields, although it faced social, political, and pedagogical resistances from various sectors. The rise of conservative governments during this period, along with the implementation of regressive and privatizing policies, dealt a severe blow to the systematization of SE. It is concluded that this can be understood as a cleavage that reveals both a greater capacity for institutional re-signification centered on teachers’ appropriation of SE and a challenge and tension regarding its continuity.
In Mexico, recent governments have made progress in formally recognizing human rights and diversity —including sexual diversity— in the content of free textbooks. However, the implementation of a legislative framework and a set of educational reforms have been a source of dispute with conservative and reactionary civil society organizations such as the National Union of Parents of Families. In this context, the objective of this study is to comprehensively reconstruct the anti-rights stance deployed by the UNPF in the context of the implementation of the human rights paradigm in the field of education in Mexico. To this end, a human rights approach and a method of political discourse analysis in education are employed. The central argument is that this organization has played a key role, with veto power, in defining the educational agenda, especially regarding the content of free textbooks, adopting a political, legal, and ethical discourse to maintain its conservative thinking.
This article describes the process of curricularizing ESI in initial teacher training in the province of Chubut, particularly in higher education institutions, as a result of a pedagogical policy framework that created conditions for such a transformation. It also describes how its incorporation enabled modifications in the pedagogical-didactic and ethical-political approach to training, presenting scope, challenges, and new approaches within the framework of national and jurisdictional anti-rights policies. At this point, we must refer that it is prepared by recovering some results of the fieldwork carried out for the Master's degree in Education at the National University of Quilmes (2022), in the final thesis that investigated the pedagogical challenges linked to ESI in the professional development of beginning teachers of Special Education with a focus on intellectual disabilities, in Esquel (Chubut), between the years 2019 and 2022, based on the enactment of ESI Law No. 26,150 and the national and jurisdictional pedagogical political framework that began in 2006, taking as a case study graduates from the only institute with such an offer in the town.
The consideration of a gender perspective is necessary to think about trans childhoods and their educational trajectories. Gender enables certain ways of being and being in the world. The article recovers the memories and experiences about the childhoods of two adult trans people and a mother who accompanies her son's transition. A case study was carried out and semi-structured interviews were used as a data collection instrument. The results are shared from three categories: Trans childhoods from the perspective of trans adults; the educational trajectories of trans childhoods and the support for trans childhoods. Among the limitations of the study is the difficulty in generalizing the results and the need to expand the number of trans people and family members consulted.
This study analyzes how the denial of the right to information in the educational sphere acts as a form of biopolitical violence directed at feminized and sexually dissident bodies in Brazil. The objective is to understand how discourses and policies against sexual and gender education operate to restrict rights and reinforce conservative norms. Methodologically, a documentary and critical discourse analysis was conducted on legislative projects, educational regulations, and materials disseminated by political and religious actors opposing the so-called “gender ideology,” between 2014 and 2022. The results reveal a systematic offensive to exclude content related to gender and sexualities from basic education, legitimized by a moralizing discourse that frames these topics as threats to childhood and family. It is concluded that this denial of the right to information is not merely an educational omission, but a deliberate strategy of social control that especially impacts women, youth, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. The Brazilian case illustrates how education becomes a battleground between democratic and authoritarian projects, exposing deep tensions around citizenship, bodies, and knowledge.
Elsa Freire e Paulo Freire: por uma pedagogia da convivência , by Nima Spigolon (2022), is part of the “Elsa Freire Triptych”1, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the true importance and the possibility of inaugurating a feminine political-pedagogical canon in the work of Paulo Freire, based on Elsa Freire’s presence in his productions. Spigolon’s book arises from the research she began in her master’s thesis and continued in her doctoral thesis at the University of Campinhas. In this first part of the triptych, Spigolon will portray the family, love, and professional life of Elsa Costa Freire from the late 1940s until 1964, when she went into exile with her family.
This paper shares the resonances of a research focused on the dis/re-learning that teachers undertake to develop pedagogical experiences that include sexuality in a comprehensive manner. A group of teachers from the Arturo U. Illia National School of Mar del Plata, who have been carrying out an Institutional Project of Integral Sexual Education (ESI) since 2020, participated in the study. Based on the assumption that education is always sexual, and therefore biographical and subjective, we set out to reconstruct the genealogy of the project; document the pedagogical experiences developed; analyze the contents and practices challenged by the ESI; and interpret the ways in which these experiences affect the processes of reconfiguration of subjectivities and the pedagogical perspectives of the teachers involved. From a qualitative framework and a narrative biographical approach, we mapped the daily and pedagogical experiences of the experience, analyzed documents, conducted participant observations and interviews with the teachers, the former director and the current director. Finally, we composed an inter-biographical narrative. We venture to affirm that the native category “ESI pedagogical perspective” contains potentialities that invite us to rethink a transversal pedagogy, which crosses links and subjectivities while inviting teachers to re-signify their practices.
This study analyzes children’s narrative discourse of personal experience in Spanish-speaking Argentine children aged 3 to 5 years, considering its structural and rhetorical characteristics from an ethnopoetic approach and stanza analysis. Oral narratives of 120 children in different socioeconomic circumstances, obtained through individual semi-structured interviews in their educational institutions, were analyzed. The narratives were transcribed and segmented into terminal units, and then into verses, stanzas and episodes. The results reveal the presence of three narrative patterns: cyclical (49.2%), canonical (30.8%) and associative (20%), with a predominance of evaluative (46.7%) and descriptive (37.5%) information over chronological (15.8%). Children aged 5 years produce the three patterns in similar measures, while younger children show a predominance of the cyclical pattern. Children in vulnerabilized contexts tend to produce cyclical and descriptive narratives, while those in non-vulnerabilized circumstances produce more canonical and evaluative narratives. This paper highlights the particularities of the narratives of Spanish-speaking Argentine children, underscoring the need for situated approaches that consider the sociocultural context of narrative production. These findings are key to developing an instrument for the assessment of children's narrative discourse that is sensitive to the linguistic and cultural diversity of this population.
In Argentina, law 26.150, enacted in 2006, created the Programa Nacional de Educación Sexual Integral to guarantee students’ right to receive sex education at all levels of schooling, in both public and private institutions. To strengthen its implementation, the Consejo Federal de Educación issued Resolución 340/18, which promotes the formation of interdisciplinary teams of ‘referentes’ serving as referents for the “Educación Sexual Integral” program. In the Provincia de Buenos Aires, the Law 14.744 and the creation of the Dirección de Educación Sexual Integral (DESI) reinforced this framework by establishing ESI referents s at regional, district, and school levels—key figures for implementing and coordinating the educational policy. This article analyzes experiences and challenges related to the implementation of the institutional liaison role, considering the legal and regulatory framework behind its emergence, as well as its application in secondary education in schools in the Provincia de Buenos Aires. It is an exploratory-descriptive qualitative study based on the review of documentary sources and in-depth interviews conducted in a purposive sample of four public secondary schools in the city of Tandil.
This article shares insights that support the thesis entitled “Disability and Integral Sexual Education: A research in the Paraná department, Entre Ríos Province”. The research aims to collect and document the narratives of adolescents and young people with intellectual disabilities, in order to analyze their experiences with Integral Sexual Education (ESI) in Entre Ríos, Argentina. The study follows a biographical-narrative methodology and seeks to highlight the situated experiences of students. In this contribution, we present both theoretical and normative frameworks that guide the research, as well as some preliminary findings from our empirical work. We emphasize the contributions of Crip Theory -as both an analytical and political lens- understanding that it supports the problematization of the narrated experiences, dismantling the fiction of compulsory ability and challenging imposed meanings on bodies. We also recognize that ESI enables and legitimizes alternative spaces, times to disrupt ableist, cishesteronotmative structures and meanings. We advocate for a ESI that allows us to reclaim and contest our bodies at play.
This article analyzes the legislative actions of right-wing and far-right parliamentarians in the Legislative Assembly of the State of Santa Catarina (ALESC), located in southern Brazil, between 2011 and 2023, focusing on proposals aimed at censorship, moral control, and the delegitimization of gender, sexuality, and diversity policies within the educational sphere. The qualitative study is based on the analysis of 67 legislative initiatives presented during the 17th, 18th, and 19th legislatures. The proposals were organized into thematic axes that reveal the centrality of education in contemporary political-ideological disputes: censorship of pedagogical and cultural materials; surveillance and criminalization of teaching practices; moralistic defense of childhood; and the imposition of conservative linguistic and cultural norms. The results underscore a coordinated and sustained offensive by the far right in Santa Catarina’s educational field, marked by legislative and symbolic actions operating through moral panics, indirect censorship, and the delegitimization of diversity policies. The article demonstrates that these actions are not merely reactive but constitute a coherent societal and educational project grounded in hierarchical, moralistic, and anti-democratic values.
This article reviews recent academic productions on secondary schools within the Permanent Education for Youth and Adults (EPJA, by its Spanish acronym) in Argentina. The central hypothesis is that these institutions foster pedagogical developments aimed at educational democratization, as identified in specialized literature. Methodologically, the study is based on documentary research, analyzing federal-level productions published since 2006. The article offers an interpretative overview structured around four thematic axes: (i) public responsibility in EPJA, the quantitative expansion of educational rights, and regulatory frameworks; (ii) curricular content for youth and adults, the social function of the modality, and students’ engagement with school knowledge; (iii) representations of learners, dynamics of recognition, and subjective transformations within EPJA; and (iv) youth identities and intergenerational relationships. Drawing on the reviewed academic literature and acknowledging the complexities and underlying tensions, this work examines pedagogical conceptions, educational practices, and student experiences that contribute to greater equity within the modality.
This article analyzes the processes through which secondary school students construct meanings around masculinities and femininities. The study is developed from a qualitative and interpretative approach and was conducted in three schools with different types of administration (technical, pre-university, and confessional) through focus groups with students. Findings show that, while traditional representations persist, there are noticeable shifts toward more plural, flexible, and inclusive conceptions. It is concluded that schools function as spaces of tension between the reproduction of heteronormative norms and the possibility of transforming them. Within this framework, young people deploy various strategies of appropriation, resistance, and resignification of gender meanings.
This article seeks to explore the interrelation between "healthy bodies" and the social construction of the sexed body as it materializes in Physical Education classes, based on an analysis of observations and interviews. The objective is to examine the connections that teachers establish between "Physical Education" and "health," under the premise that any inquiry into this research object would be reductionist without an analysis of the role played by the sex-gender system. To this end, a unit of analysis was implemented, composed of Physical Education teachers at the secondary level of a privately managed educational institution in the City of Buenos Aires. The findings reveal that sport emerges as the most efficient means for developing the body and promoting healthy practices. However, both the sports practices themselves and the physical qualities derived from them, as well as teachers’ expectations, representations, and assessment methods, vary according to the students' genitality. The boundaries of "healthy bodies" lie at the edge of the social construction of the "sexed body," shaped by the cultural mandate of what a body "can" or "must" be or do.
