Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper maps the development of a response-able (Barad 2007), creative professional learning programme for in-service teachers of an unfolding relationships and sexuality education (RSE) curriculum in Wales (UK) where the authors are uniquely and deeply entangled. We chart crucial aspects of the ethical, political and creative praxis informing this journey and explore how the post-qualitative concepts of darta and dartaphacts (Renold 2018), through creative audits facilitated by teachers that surfaced what students know and wonder about RSE, challenge assumptions about ‘what matters’ in RSE for children and young people. We diffractively analyse teachers’ experiences of conducting creative audits across three post-qualitative vignettes and a poem. These dartaphacts-in-the-making offer glimpses at the boundless potential of making student voice matter, which we argue can spark and sustain a co-produced curriculum that comes from and stays close to ‘what matters’.
Highlights
The landscape in which children and young people are navigating the contracting and expanding world of gender, sexuality and relationships is rapidly evolving, often in ways that call relationships and sexuality education policy and practice to account (e.g. Allen and Rasmussen 2017, Mayo and Blackburn 2019, Jones et al 2019)
Kathleen Quinlivan (2018, p. 145) has argued, for example, that we must cultivate new possibilities for policy and pedagogy that makeRelationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) more meaningful and relevant for young people, by ‘letting go what adults have already deemed young people need to know about sexuality and relationships’
We introduce the concepts of ‘darta’ and ‘dartaphact’ (Renold 2018) and their capacity to craft and communicate affects, feelings and experiences that matter to children and young people in the sensitive area of relationships and sexuality education (RSE)
Summary
The landscape in which children and young people are navigating the contracting and expanding world of gender, sexuality and relationships is rapidly evolving, often in ways that call relationships and sexuality education policy and practice to account (e.g. Allen and Rasmussen 2017, Mayo and Blackburn 2019, Jones et al 2019). Based on this work with the expert panel, EJ’s evolving praxis with AGENDA, and EJ’s ongoing role as consultant and advisor to Welsh Government, EJ and Ester were invited by one of the regional education authorities in Wales to develop and facilitate Wales’ first RSE professional learning programme (PLP) for in-service teachers, which is in its third year – a journey that Max (Author 2) has been mapping in his doctoral research.
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