“I Feel Like a Sex Ed Wizard Now”

Critical Community Psychology Applied in Digital Education for Teachers on the Topic of Sex Education

Abstract

The discourse around sex education is ambivalent and normatively loaded, stretching roughly between conservatism, liberalism, and neo-emancipation. In Germany, teachers receive no specific training and have little access to education, besides short and optional training from third-party providers. As a result, they feel left alone, overburdened, and politically at risk while simultaneously reporting a personal desire to make a positive change. Teach Love is a psychological knowledge transfer project applying critical community psychology to teachers’ continuing education on sex education. The participants receive emotion-, value-based, and pluralistic digital training based on empirically assessed needs and in collaboration with scientists (psychology, pedagogy, sociology) and practitioners (therapists, teachers, midwives) focusing on comprehensive competence. In this contribution, I present the empirically assessed teacher's needs on sex education and the resultant didactic. Second, I present the empirical post-measure evaluations to discuss the potential of applied critical community psychology in teachers' professionalisation. This contribution serves in three ways. Firstly, the paper presents a practically tested approach to how to deal constructively with polarizing topics in pedagogy. Secondly, the results show how to support teachers by applying critical community psychology in the teacher's professional development. Finally, insights into digital education formats, their applicability, effectiveness, and acceptability are gained.