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Doing It! with Hannah Witton

Teaching Teachers How to Teach Sex Ed with Alison Wiggins

Doing It! with Hannah Witton

Global Media & Entertainment

Health & Fitness, Relationships, Sexuality, Society & Culture

4.8651 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2022

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Hannah is joined by Alison Wiggins, who is Subject Leader for the PGCE in Social Sciences and PGCE Psychology programmes at University College London. Alison discusses how she works with teachers to remove their own personal experiences and beliefs around sex when working with students, and the importance of listening to young people and providing what they themselves tell us that they need. Alison and Hannah talk about the crossover of anti-racism work and sex education, why Alison believes primary school isn’t too early to talk about gender roles, and why Alison tells teachers to watch the Netflix show Sex Education! Hannah and Alison discuss how to create a more LGBTQ+ inclusive space in RSE for students and teachers, and why the RSE you deliver in your school won't have any impact unless the culture of your school as a whole reflects the values of equality and safety that you are teaching. Finally, they explain why we should centre pleasure (not just safety) in sex education and uphold it as an important valid reason why people have sex!

CW: brief mention of suicide, mentions of sexual harassment and violence

MORE ABOUT ALISON WIGGINS
Alison Wiggins is the Subject Leader for the PGCE in Social Sciences and PGCE Psychology programmes at IoE-UCL and leads work across ITE on PSHE, RSE and Anti-racism. She is also a tutor on the MA Education programme and contributes to the Understanding Research and Feminist Pedagogies and approaches to education modules.  Until earlier this academic year, she was also a part-time Psychology and Sociology teacher in a London Secondary school and sixth form and has been teaching for the last 14 years. She is vocal and active feminist and is passionate about building an equitable Education system and using Education and Social research as vehicles for Social Justice.  Her research interests are focused on issues of Race and Gender equity, and she is currently working with the Equality and Inclusion team in her department to develop our use of Anti-racist practice and pedagogy and is working on the creation of a new module for the MA Education focused on ‘Decolonialisation’ in education through curriculum, assessment and pedagogy.  This year, she will also be working with colleagues on cross-institutional research projects focused on the racialised experiences of Minority Ethnic student teachers and is developing an RSE specialism for all PGCE students though her collaborative work with the School of Sexuality Education. She hopes that one day she will get around to beginning her PhD!
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ally_wiggins
- School of Sexuality Education: https://www.instagram.com/school_sexed/?hl=en

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi everyone, welcome back to doing it, the Sex and Relationships podcast where sex has never been so nerdy.

0:12.5

With me, your host, Hannah Whitten.

0:14.9

In this week's episode, I am joined by Alison Wiggins.

0:18.0

Alison is the subject leader for the PGCE in social sciences and psychology

0:23.0

programs at the Institute of Education at UCL University College London. And PGCE is the certificate

0:30.3

postgraduate study to become a teacher. Allison is currently working in collaboration with the School

0:36.2

of Sexuality Education to develop an RSE program for PGCE students across the UK, which essentially means she is teaching teachers how to teach about sex.

0:47.2

And we talk about RSC a lot in this episode, which stands for relationships in sex education.

0:53.2

Alison has been teaching for the last 14 years and is a former psychology and sociology teacher

0:58.4

in a London secondary school, so she is no stranger to being a teacher in schools herself.

1:04.0

She is drawing on all her experience working with secondary school students,

1:08.3

her specialism in education and social research, as well as her

1:11.8

anti-racism and feminist work to train teachers and revolutionise how we teach sex ed in schools.

1:18.4

I first came across Alison when she was speaking on a panel at an event hosted by the School of

1:22.7

Sex Ed, and as you know, I am so passionate about sex education and changing the way young people are taught and think about sex and relationships.

1:30.9

And so I couldn't wait to talk with Alison on the podcast all about her work.

1:35.6

I absolutely loved our chat.

1:37.4

Alison is clearly making such an important impact in the world of sex education.

1:42.2

And we had a lot of interesting discussions. We spoke about how

1:45.9

Alison works with teachers to remove their own personal experiences and beliefs around sex when

1:51.6

working with students and the importance of listening to young people and providing what they

1:56.2

themselves tell us they need. We talk about why we should centre pleasure in sex education, not just safety,

...

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