In this paper, I explore how pláticas allowed for my former high school students and I to conceptualize love. This work is a response to overwhelming statistics regarding child trauma and literature that named loving relationships as a pivotal but under-conceptualized intervention. Specifically, we participated in three different iterations of…

Capitalism and its offspring, neoliberalism, are omnipresent in modern and postmodern societies. Illich, Giroux, and McLaren, among others, point to the futility and inequity of current models of education that focus on standardization, vocationalism, and conformity. Running counter to these powerful hegemonic systems, critical pedagogues and…

This literature review seeks to offer understanding about how relationships and sexuality education (RSE) has evolved in the 21st century in Aotearoa New Zealand secondary schools. The perceived demand for schools to address significant social issues, such as how youth navigate the world of relationships and sexualities, can be a challenge for the…

The aim of this study was to analyze the direct and indirect relationships between romantic myths of love and teen dating violence victimization (physical and psychological), considering the mediating role of tolerant attitudes toward abuse and the moderator role of gender. A sample of 467 adolescents who had a dating relationship at that time or…

School-based supports, such as LGBTQ+ -themed curriculum, invite opportunities for challenging oppression with respect to gender and its intersections with other identities such as sexuality and race. However, more understanding is needed regarding how literacy educators might leverage these opportunities. This article describes how intimacy,…

The aim of this research is to examine associations of adolescent sexting with gender, being in a romantic relationship, and other online or offline sexual behaviors, using the adolescent sexting scale A-SextS as a standardized measure. Data were collected from a sample of 579 Spanish secondary school pupils (47.3% girls), between the ages of 11…

The aim of the study was to explore same-sex and opposite-sex friendship functions among 12 to 13- and 16 to 17-year-old Hungarian adolescents (n = 304). To explore perceptions of friendship functions, the McGill Friendship Questionnaire (MFQ, 30 items, 6 factors: stimulating companionship, help, intimacy, reliable alliance, self-validation,…

The aim of this paper is to identify the dominant discourses of health and wellbeing that are offered in health education in Swedish schools. Issues of health and wellbeing are covered mainly in four school subjects in Sweden: physical education and health, home and consumer studies, biology, and social studies, and therefore, we interviewed…

The authors highlight the role of love and care as the 'lifeblood of being-well' for teachers in England. The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented stressors on teachers. However, the article problematises and goes beyond the dominant narrative of 'sudden crisis' on the grounds that this may obscure the complex realities of a profession…

Adopting an ethnographic lens, readers are provided a look inside a California high school sexuality education classroom. On this chosen day, two invited guest speakers from an outside company are teaching students about pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, and risks associated with having sex. Analysis of the guest speakers' pedagogical…

This article's objectives encompassed investigating the factors influencing early romantic relationships among high school students, analyzing the repercussions of such relationships on these students, and proposing policy interventions to address the issue. The research involved a sample of 26 participants, including students with romantic…

This paper illuminates how teachers are influenced by age, gender and sexuality in teaching about sex and relationships. In this analysis grounded in feminist theory, age, gender and sexuality are considered to be enacted as doings. Six interviews with teachers working with sexuality education in K-12 schools in Sweden were chosen from of a larger…

Young people's heterosexual romantic relationships is often a popular topic in youth studies and sexuality education. However, the importance of class and educational stratification and the institutional influence is rarely mentioned. Through this article, considering the differentiated expectation of young people in different high school…

Stigmatization of overweight and obese individuals is common in interpersonal relationships. This study investigated longitudinal weight change patterns among Taiwanese adolescents and the relationship of weight change patterns with delayed romantic experience from late adolescence to young adulthood by using a representative panel survey.…

This study examined the difficulties experienced by Slovenian upper-secondary school and university students aged 18 to 25 in their close social relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined the extent of social difficulties in six domains (relationships with friends, establishing a new relationship with an intimate partner, sexuality,…