Personal experiences and opinions of the teacher candidates about sexual education

Ilhami Unluoglu, Aysegul Kul Uludag, Ugur Bilge, Ahmet Keskin, Zafer Ulusoy

Osmangazi University Faculty of Medicine Department of Family Medicine Eskisehir/Turkey

Objectives: Turkey is a country that has a great young population; with 15-22 years old comprising 21 % of the society. However, there is a lack in sexual education(SE). Recently, young population has started to receive reproductive health education since they represent a high risk group of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Design and Methods: The questionnaire applied to the last term students of Osmangazi University Faculty of Education to specify; how they got the knowledge about sex from, whom they got from, if they had taken any lessons about reproductive health, if so; whether it was enough or not, which of SE they want to get, in the future whom they want their children to give SE, where and when they want these educations given. These questions were asked to them, face to face, to learn their opinions about SE and family planning .

Results: One hundred and forty participants (between the ages of 19-29) were included in the study. 81 (57.9%) of these were females and 59 (42.1%) were males. 69.3% of the students were from city centers, 30.7% of them were from rural area. In the study, 91.0% of females and 72.8% of males stated that they had their knowledge about sexual topics from friends. The second most popular source for females was books (50.6%), and for males (42.3%) was internet. 50.6% of the females stated that ;they want to take SE from educated young or adult persons whereas 47.4% of males prefered health centers or health workers. Among 53 (37.8%) students, took education about reproductive health from their schools, only 10 of them said that the education was sufficient. 60.4% of females informed that they want to take education mostly about pregnancy, birth and abortion, whereas; 59.3% of the males want information mostly about STDs. 65.0% of the participants state that, in the future, SE should be given to their children by their family and also this SE must be supported in schools.

Conclusions: Current study was conducted to get the opinions of future teacher candidates about reproductive health and make use of these opinions in points that must be taken into account in future SE planning. It is hopefull that teacher candidates who could not get regular sufficient SE in the past, demand better education for future generations. It is obvious that SE must be given continuously throughout all ages and teachers must be given a higher support in doing this since teachers and teacher candidates play an important role in future planning.