Sex Education – Why Bother? The Contribution of a Sex Education Course in a Multicultural College for StudentTeachers

Abstract

This paper describes the results of a quantitative research study, pre and post design, conducted in a multicultural teachers' college in Israel, with the purpose of investigating differences between student-teachers who completed a “Human Sexuality” course and a control group, which did not. Three variables were examined: knowledge, attitudes concerning different aspects of human sexuality and self-efficacy to deal with sex education. The main findings of the research indicate a significant increase in knowledge and self-efficacy of the students, both Jews and Arabs, in the research group, but not in the control group. Attitudes were more progressive in the research group after the course, but did not change in the control group.