"Låt oss prata om sex" : Engelsklärares upplevelser av att undervisa 'sexualitet, samtycke och relationer'

In recent years, the Swedish School Inspectorate (2018; 2025) has carried out investigations that demonstrate that teachers struggle to include themes of what has previously been called sex education in their teachings. This paper seeks to investigate English teachers’ perceptions and experience of interpreting the knowledge area of ‘sexuality, consent, and relationships’ (SCR) in the policy documents for the Swedish upper secondary school, and what opportunities and challenges it imposes on their teaching. The method for this study was semi-structured interviews that were held with five upper secondary school English teachers, and the collected data was analyzed thematically. The findings indicated that the participating teachers found ‘sexuality, consent, and relationships’ to be an important knowledge area which was favorable to teach about in English as a foreign language; however, lack of didactic training, time constraint and the sensitive and private nature of the knowledge area made it difficult for the teachers to teach about SCR. The findings align with the Swedish School Inspectorate’s reports from 2018 and 2025, which indicates that teachers must receive proper training and better support from the Swedish National Agency of Education on how to negotiate discussions surrounding the knowledge area, so that the teachers do not refrain from using it in their teachings. In accordance with Freire’s (2000) theories, in-depth learning cannot be achieved by alienating controversial topics from discussions. Instead, teachers must engage themselves and students in real-life issues to develop their critical consciousness through dialogue. As such, further work needs to be done for teachers to feel fully prepared to guide dialogue surrounding ‘sexuality, consent, and relationships’.