EDUC 6013: Teaching Literacy to Diverse Students

Literacy for Diverse Learners

Table of contents
Family structures 1
Healthy sexuality 1
Gender and sexuality expression 2
Impact of stereotypes on young minds 3
Deconstructing negative ideologies 3
Negative behaviours reinforcing stereotypes and phobias 4
Developing respectful behaviour in regards to sexual as well as gender diversity 5
Insights 5
Inference drawn 6
Recommendations 7

Family structures
In today's world, the previously existent family structures have begun to evolve. The rapidly changing
world with aid of technology has resulted in the shift in the traditional outlook of a family. There is a lot
of diversity and are quite unusual from old perspective. The family structures commonly observed are
normal couples, same-sex couples, single parents, stepfamilies as well as blended families (Rasmussen,
Rofes&Talburt, 2016). The diminishing gender gap can be termed as another factor for the shift. A large
number of factors such as financial stress, declining birth rates as well changes in definitions are also to
be blamed.
Healthy sexuality
Sexulity study exoerts have been able to identify several characteristics related to healthy sexuality.
Healthy sexuality can be defined as an individual’s ability to intgratesexulaity in day to day living. It may
have attributes such as affection, companionship and tenderness. It is important for people in relationship
to know the role of sex in their life. As noted by Ullman (2015), it will be wrong to exaggerate
relationship by focusing of sexulaity as it is a natural part of human life. Healthy or natural sexuality often
includes an individual’s acceptance of the primal nature of humans as well as the display of positive
attitude towards nudity and sexual urges.
Healthy sexuality can be defined as appreciation of individual’s own body in order to seek out knowledge
and information in context of reproduction, understanding the effect of physical and sexual development,
appropriate interaction with all the genders to develop an understanding as well respect for gender
identity and sexual orientation so as the individual can appropriately express their intimacy and emotions
that will help in building and sustaining meaningful relationships by avoiding ones that are manipulative
and exploitative (Haberland&Rogow, 2015). Health sexuality also has components of communication,
acceptance of affection, expression of emotions without any guilt, shame or fear.
Defining normal and healthy has become complicated due to the increasing variance in the sexual
behaviour of people as well as due to introduction of variables that influence sexuality such as gender,
health or even age. It has been observed in suxuality studies that sexuality in people is influenced by
cognitive distractions and performance anxiety. The flexibility of an individual towards sexual behaviours
or attitudes has been also discerned as a gender difference that influences healthy sexuality. In words of
Szirom (2017). it can be safely stated that the terms normal or healthy for describing an individual’s
sexulaity may not be applicable to another.
Gender and sexuality expression
The term gender identity is used for the self perceptions of an individual using their individualistic senses
as well as personal experiences in context of gender. Hence gender identity is an individualistic thing.
Normally the society is gender binary as it only accepts two genders namely male and female (Joneet al.

2016). However, it is now fair knowledge that people can identify themselves as both genders or as
neither of the genders. They may also choose to be between genders. Gender is not the birth assigned sex
of an individual person and can evolve and change over period of time.
The gender or sexuality expression is used for describing the outward appearance donned by an individual
to display their sexual orientation or gender identity. This normally includes changes in physical
expressions such as hairstyle, clothing, makeup as well as social expressions. It should be stated that
gender expression is not equivalent to gender identity. As noted by Ferfolja (2015), in order to deal with
factors like social taboo, phobias, childhood influences as well as genetic predetermination, the
expressions are subjected to change from individual to individual. Sexual identity is what an individual
believes,feels and response.
Sexuality can be understood by understanding the way in which a person has been socialised, acculturated
and sexalised. It can be also defined as the total sum of the intimate encounters as well as relations of the
person. The shaping of sexulaity is often associated with values as well as beliefs. It is also influenced by
the societal expectations, individual sexual characteristics as well as physical attributes (Robinson et al.
2014). Sexulaity is expressed in the ways a person speaks or dresses or smiles. It is quite understandable
that in present day and age it is necessary to understand sexulity as a whole and not just sex to develop
and maintain good relations with people.
Impact of stereotypes on young minds
The gender stereotypes such as homophobia, heterosexism or transphobia are culturally ingrained within
a person. It is influenced by expectations pertaining to appropriate behaviour of females as well as males.
As observed by Ullman (2017), apart from the major phobias, narrow gender stereotypes also exist in the
society such as men do not cry or that females should be submissive. As a result the younger generation
of global citizens have begun accepting stereotypes as societal facts. The rigidity in phobias and
stereotypes has resulted in growing inequity among the different genders which makes these young
individuals to accept as well as expect the gender related power imbalances.
Such an outlook has been responsible growing gender hate crimes most of l=which largely go unreported
due to social stigmatisation and fear. This has led to depraved situations when individuals start believing
that exerting control over another person cannot be considered as violence. This has led to belief that
abuse cannot occur in healthy relationship (Ollis, 2016). People have started to believe that sexual
harassment on street is not a serious offence. Majority of males are under the impression that women
should stop being progressive.
It is time to be critical of the way gender identity and sexual expression have been stereotyped by the
education system and media. It not only impact the hopes as well as aspirations of the children but also
inhibit them from exploring or developing their interests due to such phobias which in turn will result in