Mediating sexuality as lived biology in science teacher education: the SciSexTed model

This article examines how the SciSexTed model mediates preservice science teachers’ engagement with sexuality education when scientific content becomes emotionally charged, ethically uncertain and normatively complex. The model is a campus-based instructional design that provides practice-near and closely supervised skills training in teaching puberty and sexuality. Upper primary pupils visit the university campus and participate in station-based teaching led by preservice teachers, enabling repeated teaching encounters, adjustment, reflection and re-teaching. Methodologically, the study is anchored in Design-Based Research, combined with the Constant Comparative Method. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews, podcast reflections and observation notes from three iterations conducted between 2022 and 2024. Through comparative analysis of controversial, emotional and sensitive incidents, the study examines how preservice teachers respond when sexuality education exceeds reproductive physiology and becomes entangled with pupils’ questions, emotions, identities and values. The analysis shows that reproductive biology initially functioned as a perceived safe ground, but that pupils’ questions unsettled this framing. The article argues that SciSexTed makes ethical tension, uncertainty and friction pedagogically available through repeated teaching, mediating artefacts and collective reflection. It contributes by conceptualising sexuality education in science as lived biology, where bodies, meaning, vulnerability and scientific knowledge are mediated together.