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RISE: Research on Inequality, Sexuality, and Education
Principal Investigator: Jessica
Fields, PhD
Student
Interns
Community
Collaborators
All of the projects in Dr. Fields’s research program
challenge conventional understandings of the “effects”
of sexuality education to include the lessons students take
away about sexual difference and inequality; the intersections
of sexuality, race, and gender inequalities; people’s
claims to membership and belonging in social contexts; and
their own and others’ entitlement to sexual pleasure
and respect.
Published Summer '08
Ongoing
- Jailed Women and HIV Education: A
Collaborative Investigation
Participatory action research project examining (1) how
risk and pleasure come together for women in an educational
setting hosted by a punitive institution; and (2) health
education’s capacity to challenge racialized, gendered,
sexual, and economic social inequalities. Methodological
focus on researchers, educators, and inmates working together
to generate knowledge about women, sexuality, and incarceration.
This study is in partnership with health educators from
the Forensic AIDS Project (FAP).
FUNDING: California HIV Research Program; SFSU Center for
Health Disparities Research and Training
- Relations: Race, Gender, and Sexuality, in Young Adults'
Lives
San Francisco site of an international comparative ethnographic
study of race, gender, and sexuality in young adults' lives.
Participant observation, interview, and survey data collection
currently underway in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Sáo
Paolo), South Africa (Capetown and Johannesburg), and the
United States (Chicago and San Francisco).
FUNDING: Ford Foundation
Concluded
- Sexuality Education For and By Youth
Study of whether and how sexuality education changes when
young people are the teachers and learners. Particular focus
on young people’s efforts to manage “educator”
and “peer” roles; heteronormativity in sexuality
education for and by youth; and institutional constraints
in which youth educators work. Data come from focus groups
led by student research assistants, who also play a central
role in data analysis.
FUNDING: American
Psychological Foundation Wayne T. Placek Small Grant
- Social Inequalities and the Movement for Same-Sex
Marriage
Considers contemporary movement for same-sex marriage and
its elision of social inequalities based on race, age, and
class.
FUNDING: San Francisco State
University Human Sexuality Studies Program (with funds
from the Ford Foundation)
- Needs and Resources of Peer Education Programs: An
Assessment
In Fall 2005, RISE began collaborating with Health
Initiatives for Youth (HIFY), a San Francisco-based
organization that promotes the health and well-being of
young people, to assess the needs and resources of Bay Area
youth education programs. Collaborative members, including
student research assistants, collected and analyzed data
from surveys, participant observations, and one-on-one interviews
with youth educators and program coordinators. HIFY will
use the findings to improve the trainings and other services
they provide youth sexuality education programs in the Bay
Area.
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Few subjects spark more controversy in debates over
U.S. schooling than sex education. Conservatives argue
that sexual abstinence should be teachers’ only
message; liberals counter that teachers should provide
comprehensive instruction that helps young people avoid
STDs and pregnancies. Students and teachers find themselves
caught in the middle of controversies that are seldom
as clear-cut as the debate suggests. Risky Lessons brings
readers inside middle school classrooms to show how
students and teachers both support and subvert the official
sex education curriculum. Ultimately critical of both
conservative and liberal approaches to sex education,
Fields argues that sex education’s aims need not
be limited to reducing the risk of sexual activity.
Instead, sex education can help young people contend
with sexual desires, and gender, race, and class inequalities.