Examination of a Teacher Training Program Aimed to Cultivate Student Teachers' Perspectives on Teaching Sexuality Education: Using the Jigsaw Method

Abstract

The present study examined effects on student teachers' learning of a course aimed at cultivating a particular view of sexuality education instruction, using the jigsaw method (a method of organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each other to succeed). A questionnaire was completed before and after the course (July 2018, July 2019) by 282 teacher training students at a private university in the Tokyo metropolitan area. In order to examine changes in the students' views of sexuality education instruction, (a) images of sexuality, (b) reasons for sexuality education, and (c) specific changes in the students after the sexuality education course were analyzed using KH Coder. The results indicated that the co-occurrence of words in the questionnaire, such as embarrassed, different, knowledge, adult, and gender, changed from before to after the class, in that the words were used in a different context. These results suggest that the student teachers' perceptions of sexuality and sexuality education had changed, and that their perception had shifted from being learners to being instructors. In addition, it appears that the students had learned with their peers as a result of the use of the collaborative jigsaw method. This may mean that, although the members of the jigsaw groups may not have understood the course content individually, they had tried to understand it through dialogue with others in their group. This, in turn, suggests that the students may not have constructed what they learned about sexuality only intellectually, but rather that they constructed the meaning performatively through the dialogue with others that is intrinsic to the jigsaw method.