SHE Report
The New Brunswick Teachers Sexual Education Survey 2021 is a survey of elementary, middle, and high school teachers based in New Brunswick. We recruited teachers in teaching in both Anglophone and Francophone school districts but did not receive enough responses from teachers in Francophone school districts to use their responses. Therefore, this report is based on teachers in Anglophone school districts only. These teachers were recruited via social media and through partners at the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development who shared the survey with teachers. All data were collected between September 2020 and April 2021 using an online survey platform. The final sample consisted of 412 teachers who had taught in Anglophone school districts in New Brunswick in 2019-2020 and/or 2020-2021.
Main Results
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Teachers in New Brunswick strongly support comprehensive education that includes a wide range of topics. Teachers suggest that comprehensive sex education should start in elementary school.
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Most participants reported that teachers in general, and themselves in particular, were not provided with adequate training to teach SHE either as part of their Bachelor of Education training or through subsequent professional develop opportunities in their work as in-service teachers. Nonetheless, about half of the teachers had taught SHE in New Brunswick. Perhaps as a result, many had engaged in self-directed learning.
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Only a minority of teachers rated their own SHE at school or at home in childhood as good or very good. However, on average the teachers indicated that they would feel comfortable, although not extremely comfortable, teaching a range of sexual health topics. Many participants reported that they did not cover most or all of the outcomes. Even so, interestingly, most teachers rated the quality of their instruction as good or very good.
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Teachers identified factors that had a positive impact on their willingness to provide SHE, including their own level of comfort, their ability to relate to students, their personal views about SHE, and feeling secure in their position;
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Teachers were mixed in their evaluation of both New Brunswick’s existing SHE curricula as well as the SHE currently delivered in their school, but on average rated both as neither poor nor good.
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Many teachers did not feel that they had a choice about whether they teach SHE in New Brunswick schools. In general, the teachers we surveyed were willing (although not extremely willing) to teach SHE, although a minority would prefer any other teacher than themselves to provide SHE. Also of note, they were more willing to teach some topics than others.