Diversidade sexual no espaço escolar: concepções, percepções e práticas de adolescentes em escola pública urbana do Sudoeste do Paraná

Abstract

This research analyzes the sexual diversity in the school space, emerging thematic in the present time, given that it is the context that has been designated as the 3rd place of discrimination against homosexuals, overcome only by the family and by friends and neighbors. Held in 2016-2017, the objective was to identify and analyze the perceptions, conceptions and practices of the high school adolescents of an urban public school in southwestern Paraná on sexual diversity and sexual rights as human and fundamental rights. Anchored in the theoretical-methodological framework of historical-dialectical materialism, it analyzed the question from a critical and reflexive perspective, with the purpose of understanding the concept of sexuality and sexual diversity, to identify the representations of adolescents, to apprehend social reality in which the object was immersed and to substantiate its analysis, in a perspective of totality and consideration of its multiple relations. This is a qualitative research of an ethnographic nature, with questionnaires (93 adolescents, aged between 16 and 18 years) and focus groups (25, of the participants of the questionnaire), as data collection tools. Adolescents participated in five meetings in two weekly focus groups, corresponding to fifteen hours of debates. In the groups, the discussion of ideas was encouraged, in a constant exercise of speaking and listening, and it was sought to deepen the treatment of the questions of the questionnaire. The data analysis was developed throughout the interaction process with the research participants and with the environment in which they were inserted. The research results evidenced the lack of knowledge and the confusion of the subjects on issues related to sexual diversity; the existence of prejudice and discrimination in context; the predominance of the treatment of questions of sexuality and sexual diversity by the teachers under an uncritical, normative, moralistic and /or religious approach, with emphasis on the biological, reproduction, health and sexual violence dimensions; the prevalence of approaching sexuality issues indirectly and unintentionally in the disciplines, pointing to a lack of space for the school to act in sex education work, with a view to recognizing and respecting sexual diversity and sexual rights, based on current legislation; evidenced imperatives of teacher education and some possibilities of paths to be followed, with the aim of moving towards the necessary performance of the school; and the potential of the focus group to promote knowledge and critical reflection on sexual diversity in order to pursue dialogue and students and teacher formation. This procedure has shown that the absence of the imposition of a given ideology is valuable for everyone to feel welcomed in the debate and active in the construction of knowledge. In the struggle against the hegemony of heteronormative logic, education is a way for the ethical formation of young people and for the possibility of knowledge being apprehended and lived meaningfully, in a process in which action is followed by reflection, in a dialectical and continuous movement.