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Sex education training videos need to be more inclusive of LGBTQIA2S+ people – study

In the development of sex education training videos, all aspects of the video shoot – from drafting of scripts, scenes and characters to the actors hired and the props used on set – should be informed by inclusivity.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels.com

Sexuality education often fails LGBTQIA2S+ students, few of whom report ever receiving inclusive education at school. Yet sexuality education classrooms have the potential to be safe, affirming, and inclusive spaces if educators receive training to develop inclusion skills.

This is according to a study – “Using LGBTQIA2S+ Inclusive Practices When Filming Sex Education Training Videos: Lessons Learned” by Mia Barrett, B. A. Laris, Regina Firpo-Triplett, and Tamara Kuhn – that appeared in the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) by SAGE Journals.

This study particularly looked at the case of SkillFlix for Educators, a streaming video training platform created to improve educators’ skills in facilitating sexuality education to youth, regardless of the curriculum. The platform was developed by social science R&D firm dfusion inc. (Scotts Valley, California), which stressed that there is a need to be inclusive in the development of any or all sex education training videos.

For the dfusion inc. research team, all aspects of the video shoot – from drafting of scripts, scenes and characters to the actors hired and the props used on set – should be informed by inclusivity. And here, there are several lessons that can be learned about inclusivity, including the following:

1. Avoid siloing the inclusion.  

Offering a single module on LGBTQIA2S+ inclusivity is insufficient. As one advised dfusion inc., “We need to think of inclusiveness across skills,” woven into the fabric of the classroom, and not silo LGBTQIA2S+ issues to a single lesson or topic.

2. Use inclusive design strategies

To model inclusivity in the videos, the dfusion inc. project team needed to not only create multiple LGBTQIA2S+ storylines and characters but, additionally, to cast LGBTQIA2S+ actors who brought their insights to the production, offering real time feedback on things like tone and dialogue. Several actors expressed excitement over playing a role that matched their identity. One actor explained, “As a young nonbinary demisexual, shoots and programs like these are very meaningful to me.”

3. Create welcoming/inclusive workspaces.  

The project team noted that “the skills we hoped to teach educators became the skills we needed to enact on set.”  Staff dedicated time to comprehensive introductions of actors and crew, sharing names, pronouns, responding to ice breaker questions, and reviewing expectations of behavior. Ensuring safe spaces and privacy options for changing/ breaks, having staff wear tags identifying their pronouns, and immediately responding to misgendering and microaggressions all contributed to an inclusive production environment.

In the end, “to effectively teach sex education, educators need professional development to develop skills, specifically skills for being LGBTQIA2S+ inclusive,” stressed the researchers.

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