Resumen de Educate to healthy sexuality in primary school based on the identifation of children’s conceptions
Sexuality Education (SE) in Portugal is mandatory from Primary School. Considering theimportance of knowing the previous conceptions of children in order to adequate theeducational intervention in this area, the present study had the following objectives: toidentify primary school children's conceptions about sexual education, sexuality andreproduction; to identify children's learning interests in matters of sexuality; to establish theassociation between the individual factors gender and grade level and the conceptions ofchildren. The sample included 96 children (45 females and 51 males) aged between 8 and11 years, who frequented the 3rd (n = 52) and 4th (n = 44) year of schooling in a large urbancenter in the North region of Portugal. The data collection tool was a questionnaire, builtspecifically for the purposes of this research. The analysis of the collected data wasperformed with the SPSS program (version 25.0). A descriptive analysis was done to featurethe conceptions of children and then the parametric Student's T test was applied in order todetermine the associations between these conceptions and the independent variables sexand grade level. The results showed that: only a third of the children had participated insexuality education activities at school; the mother is the primary source of information,followed by the teachers; most children think that SE should start at primary school; themajority is favorable to the approaches on the body and reproduction and relies on teachers’knowledge to do so; about reproduction children already demonstrate scientifically acceptedknowledge, and fertilization, the description of the female genitalia and internal genitalia arethe items they least know. Statistically significant differences were found between boys andgirls and depending on the grade level.
