Sexuality Education & Therapy with Children
Popular Culture and Pornography Education to Improve the Efficacy of Secondary School Staff Response to Student Sexual Harassment.
Open Access: No.
Abstract
As middle and high school students consume and create their own pornography or use it as a form of violence perpetration known as image-based sexual abuse, school staff struggle to find appropriate responses to these issues. As pornography use becomes more prevalent, and discourse on sexual violence more public, pornography education could become a tool for preventing sexual violence and promoting sexual health. In response, we explored the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of PopPorn, a 4-module pornography and IBSA professional development training program in a sample of staff who work for Midwestern public schools (i.e., schools providing free public education funded by tax dollars and maintained by local government). Results indicate that the majority of staff perceive student pornography use and IBSA perpetration to be critical problems that negatively impact school climate. Results also indicate that the PopPorn brief intervention increases staff knowledge of and efficacy in addressing pornography and IBSA-related problems and reduces harmful sexual double standard attitudes that have been linked to victim blaming in instances of sexual violence. This promising program adds to a growing number of media and pornography literacy interventions aimed at improving sexual violence prevention and response.
Relevance
“Public school staff are under-prepared to address online sexual misconduct like watching pornography or perpetrating IBSA [image-based sexual abuse or ‘revenge porn’] on school-supplied devices. Students have described negative experiences reporting in-person sexual harassment to public school staff, which ultimately deters them from help-seeking.” Additionally, we know that “sexual media literacy programs for youth are a critical component of sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention.” Indeed, “public school staff overwhelmingly agreed that pornography and IBSA education are needed.”
This study investigated the efficacy of a particular professional development program (PopPorn) for school staff at high schools. The program is delivered in one 4-hour session (during a professional development day) in the form of 4 modules: (1) The New Sexual Environment; (2) Gendered Sexual Culture; (3) Teens’ Online Interactions (which includes adolescent pornography usee and the effects of porn on adolescent brains); and (4) Sexual Violence and the Internet.
“Our study shows the promise of the PopPorn program for providing this training, as staff that completed the program demonstrated increased knowledge of and. efficacy in addressing students’ pornography use and perpetration of IBSA and a reduction in harmful sexual double standard attitudes.”
Citation
Maas, M. K., Gal, T., Cary, K. M., & Greer, K. (2022). Popular Culture and Pornography Education to Improve the Efficacy of Secondary School Staff Response to Student Sexual Harassment. American journal of sexuality education, 17(4), 435–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/15546128.2022.2076757
