Invest in teacher training on CSE
One of the recommendations from this meet called on investing in high quality and inclusive pre- and in-service teacher training for comprehensive sexuality education. This is very important. We are not only talking about students' curricula, which is also very important, and that is the agenda that we are all pushing forward, but in addition to students' curricula we are also talking about teachers pre- and in-service teacher training curricula, which should manditorily include comprehensive sexuality education, said Sai.
We also advocated for stronger education system policies and investments in teacher training so that they can promote adolescent health and well-being. We also talked about the meaningful inclusion of youth, adolescents, and teachers themselves in the development of pre-service and in-service training curricula. When the training curricula of the teachers is being developed, there needs to be consultations of the teachers themselves and there also needs to be the consultation of youth and adolescents into such curricula, said Sai.
Teacher class action research
One of the other recommendations that came out of this process was teacher action research. So, within the classroom practices we need to enable teacher class action research so that classroom practices and the pedagogy can be improved and it can be more resilient to meet the needs of students seeking such education, shared Sai Jyothirmai Racherla, who would also be speaking at the upcoming ICFP 2025 next week in Bogota, Colombia.
There was also focus on how we measured teaching and learning of comprehensive sexuality education within education systems and the data that needs to be collected at scale across the systems, added Sai.
Are we taking care of the teachers' well-being and health?
Another important discussion at this technical convening was around if we are taking care of teachers' psychosocial health and well-being because teachers' health and well-being also impact students health and well-being. So, we cannot just look at a very extractive way of how we need to provide comprehensive sexuality education to students irrespective of what is the state of the teachers. Are the teachers having the right resources? Are the teachers having the right education materials? Are the teachers in the first place having proper facilities for them to be in a well-being status for them to provide comprehensive sexuality education? rightly said Sai.
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