ERIC Number: EJ1028195
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1468-1811
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Do Primary Students Understand How Pregnancy Can Occur? A Comparison of Students in Jakarta, West Java, West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi, Indonesia
Utomo, Iwu Dwisetyani; McDonald, Peter; Reimondos, Anna; Utomo, Ariane; Hull, Terence H.
Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, v14 n1 p95-109 2014
In Indonesian primary schools, sex education is implicitly integrated into various related subjects, such as science, biology, social studies and religion. The technical facts of ovulation and sperm are mentioned in biology, although little or no connection is made between this process and sexual intercourse. By the end of primary school, therefore, children are likely to have a poor understanding of how pregnancy can occur. Given that young girls at this age have already experienced or will soon experience menarche, and given the increasing trend towards delaying the age at marriage in Indonesian society, this lack of knowledge places young people at risk of various negative consequences, including unwanted pregnancy. In this paper, we investigate the level of understanding regarding human reproduction amongst 1762 students attending the last year of primary school, distributed across 32 different schools in Indonesia. Despite the fact that all schools follow a national curriculum, our results reveal widespread variability in the students' comprehension of how pregnancy can occur. In particular, students attending Islamic religious schools and those in less developed provinces of Indonesia appear to have a much poorer understanding of the link between sexual intercourse and conception.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Elementary School Students, Pregnancy, Comparative Analysis, Sex Education, Gender Differences, Knowledge Level, Risk, National Curriculum, Geographic Location, Surveys, Questionnaires, Institutional Characteristics, Islam, Academic Achievement, Urban Schools, Rural Schools, Multivariate Analysis, Cultural Differences
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Grade 6; Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Indonesia; Indonesia (Jakarta)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A