Teachers’ Attitude about Curriculum content addressing Adolescent Reproductive Health

Abstract

There remains taboo surrounding sexuality in our society. Many adolescents are 
sexually active but are not equipped with enough knowledge about HIV/AIDS and use of 
contraceptives. So to raise their awareness of reproductive health (i) provision of comprehensive 
youth friendly services as well as (ii)introduction to sex education are utmost important. To 
empower the youth WHO has already issued comprehensive curriculum on sexuality education 
that highlights role of human rights and gender education as remedial measures. Though several 
efforts on curriculum development have been made they all are far from realistic situation. 
Teachers play key roles in development of curriculum that supports wellbeing of adolescent 
reproductive health. Weaknesses of curriculum on adolescent reproductive health can be ruled 
out with greater involvement of teachers. Undergoing appropriate training, sharing their 
experiences they can contribute to the knowledge and skill about management of adolescent 
reproductive health concerns. Curriculum interventions in promoting adolescent reproductive 
health require positive attitude, psychological competencies and better interpersonal skills of 
teachers. It is their honest efforts and more desired involvement with students in classroom that 
eventually promote student teacher dialogue about wellbeing of adolescent reproductive health. 
Following mixed method of research, structured interview is conducted with ―Manual for 
Measuring Teachers ‗Attitudes and Comfort in Teaching Human Sexuality” developed by Miguel 
A. Perez, Raffy Luquis, and Laura Allison (2004). 50 teachers from schools irrespective of 
medium of instruction and nature of affiliation across the city of Kolkata are sampled randomly. 
5 focus group discussions taking 10 teachers at a time (area wise) are conducted to gather 
information for content analysis. Then data gathered from analysis of both the qualitative and 
quantitative methods are compared with information gathered from literature review through 
data triangulation to find out the expected characteristics of school based adolescent 
reproductive health education and find out what causes negative attitude and discomfort 
amongst teachers that they discourage sex education at school.