Eun Joo Lee | 4 Articles |
PURPOSE
This study was conducted to analyze the discourse of puberty in the early teenage girls. METHOD The participants were 24, 11-15years old girls who were interviewed in face-to-face using a semi-structured questionnaire. The interviews were done between October 29 and December 27 2003. Analysis of the qualitative data was done in 2 steps. RESULTS First, the theme of the girls' puberty discourse was identifying normality and consisted of 5 categories : i) defining puberty as experiencing changes, ii) acknowledging their own puberty connecting it with their definitions of puberty, iii) selectively excluding/recognizing the actual pubertal changes by seeing themselves as nonsexual and negative beings, iv) recognizing the pubertal changes as becoming women and making them not peculiar but normal, and v) sharing the knowledge and experience of change inactively and exclusively and resisting the dominant discourse. Three main discourse frames, marking off sexual/nonsexual, man/women, and major/minor were revealed in the second step of the analysis. They were intricately woven with each other and converged on sex. CONCLUSION The girls posited themselves as being asexual, unstable, and marginal. So there is a need to help them recognize their pubertal state as physical and mental paradigmatic changes and assure their pubertal changes as positive.
The purpose of this study was to reveal what influences the divergent methodological researches have brought the nursing practice in during the past 3 decades. The nursing record sheets ie, the nursing discourses were analyzed to know the knowledges that were recorded, accepted and communicated in nursing practice at pediatric intensive care units, and unclosed the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. The texts were 13 sheets, 3 kinds of nursing record(7 24hours flow charts, 4 nursing information record sheets and 2 transfer record sheets) used at 4 hospitals. The unit of analysis was 'word'. First, all words of the sheets were listed up, clustered into categories based on their contents. And then, the larger conceptual themes were drawn to elucidate the effect of the knowledge/power and the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. To enhanced the validity of the analysis, the data were analyzed by two researchers.
The 'words' were classified into 3 categories; 'general information', 'assessment' and 'intervention'. The conceptual themes of the texts were 'the gaze for quantification and objectification' and 'technical/assimilated caring'. This themes reflected the logic positivistic and biomedical view that had dominated at clinical practice. Nursing has endeavored to resist the logic- positivistic knowledge/power and to established the nursing knowledge/power based on multiple philosophies and methodologies, especially phenomenological-interpretative.
But the results of this study revealed that such efforts in nursing theory and research couldn't influenced the knowledge of practice. Logic positivism was yet so strong and the biomedical model yet dominated in the clinical practice. It identified that the borrowed theory and the knowledge from the received view gave nursing the power. But they were modalities that reinforced the dominant, medical power.
Nursing has investigate the other positions (feminism, Habermas' critical social theory and Foucault's discourse theory). This positions suggest different assumptions but share the common concepts; equality, emancipation and freedom. The important point is how make these concepts the practical for nursing knowledge/ power in practice. We must recognize that the praxis at clinical setting take place at the field unlike theoretical praxis. The change of clinical practice is the social, economic and political change.
The goal of this research was to provide the basic data of sexual education for late schooler by finding out what they want to know about sex, or to see, if any, its relevancy between female and male students and between each grade. The sample for this research was a total of 453 students in 4th, 5th and 6th grade from 12 different classes at two elementary schools which were located in C city and in B province. The children were requested to write down three points on what they want to know or to learn most about sex, and their answers were put through two analytical stages in order to classify and to examine. The followings are the conclusions from the data. 1. The female cluster took 44.2% out of the whole sample, and there were 151 students per each grade. The specific girl ratios for each grade were 42.4%, 50.3% and 39.7% respectively. 2. It was noted that a total of 1,195 questions were gathered from the students writings, 45% of the questions was raised by the female students. The 4th grade students raised 432questions (43.8% by the girl) while the 5th. and the 6th grade students raised 387 (53.2% by the girl) and 376 questions (42.3% by the girl) respectively. The average number of questions per students was 2.6 while the female students raised 2.8 questions which was more than the average 2.5 questions by male students. It was the 4th grade female student cluster, which raised the most question (3.0) while the 6th grade male students raised the least question (2.4) in average. 3.
The questions raised by the children could be divided into seven categories of the knowledge need on sex. They were Reproduction (310 questions, 25.9%), Sexual Culture (230, 19.2%), Concept of sex (125, 18.0%), Changes of Puberty (172, 14.4%), Sexual Health (119, 10.0%), Anatomy and Physiology of Reproductive System (78, 6.5%) and Sexual Tendency and behavior (71, 5.9%). 4.'Reproduction'was the most frequently raised questions not only by both sex groups but also by the 5th grade students. Both sexes in the 4th grade showed the highest interest in Sexual Culture while it was Changes in Puberty for the both sexes in the 6th grade.
The knowledge need on sex of the children indicated what they understand sexuality. They apprehended sex as sex, gender and sexuality in an inclusive way. They showed a major interest in the biological sex and the sexual activities. It seems that the children managed to understand clearly the meaning of gender, furthermore, they even pointed out that the streotyped sex role, patrimonial system and the sexual discrimination were unreasonable. The students possessed not only the least but also the most negative understanding in regard of sexuality. Two suggestions were made from the above conclusions for the practical sex education as well as its research. 1. For the practice: The sex education for the elementary upper grade school student should be relevant with their cognitive characteristics, also it should be more specific on the reproductive organs of both sexes, the actual scenes of the pregnancy and child delivery procedures. The gender concept should be added to the biological sex education, which will lead them to understand the unreasonableness of today's male-superior phenomenon and correct them. It is also necessary to develop educational programs for this age group so as to help them to understand sex in the sense of sexuality as well.
2. For the research: It is not easy to draw out a through conclusion since this study was carried out as one-time data collection. Yet it is undeniably helpful for the sex education if we can understand what the children want to know about sex, how much they know about it by conducting deep-interview researches through a small number of sample.
The purpose of this article was to get hold of adolescent's needs for sex knowledge and to reveal their understanding of sex. These results may be applied to the sex education and counselling for adolescent. The participants of study were 267 students (females, 144 ; males, 123) who were the first and second grade form 1 middle and 2 high schools. They were asked to describe 3 questions that they wanted to know or to learn about sex. Their questions about sex were total 779(girls, subtotal 456, mean 3.2: boys, subtotal 323, mean, 2.6). These questions categorized to 9 items by content analysis. The items were 'sexual drive, behavior and tendency(229, 29.4%)', 'anatomy and physiology of reproductive system(140, 18.0%)', 'reproduction(131, 16.8%)', 'concept of sex(31, 4.0%)', 'acquaintance between the other sexes(17, 2.2%)', and 'the others(9, 1.2%)' in order of frequency. The most frequent item that the student want to know or learn about sex was 'sexual drive, behavior and tendency' except girls of sophomore in middle school.
There were several features in participants' needs for sex knowledge as respects of the understanding of sex-biological sex, gender, and sexuality. The prominent feature in knowledge need of biological sex was that the participants had the interests according to their biological sex. They had the negative attitude to the phenomenons(ex, menstruation and pregnancy, phimosiectomy, etc) that they experienced or would experience due to their biological sex.
A part of them asked the questions based the misconceptions and used the slangs or 'XX', ect. to name the male or female genitalia. The male students wanted to know the female genitalia. The participants' understanding of gender reflected the sexism of our society, but they didn't accept and had doubts about the dual, hierarchical structure of that. The students, especially female seemed to be powerless to the harms of the sexual violence. Girls had much interest in their appearances and complained to our sexual culture that women comforted and served men. The participants had the dual perspective that the sexuality as respects of physiologic phenomenon was considered as natural but that as related to heterosexuals was as negative. And they deemed that men's sexual drive was stronger than women's and was difficult or was not able to be inhibited. They had much interests in homosexuality but reflected the negative attitude to that in our society. Adolescent felt wonder why the expressions of sexuality of adult were permitted but theirs were not. Lastly, a part of boys substituted querying the sexuality of animals for asking that of human. Maybe it was because of the embarrassment to talk about human's sexuality directly. The teenaged participants understood that the sex had not only the biological meanings but also the sociocultural meanings. They regarded the sex as natural and wanted to know it, but they had conceptions that it was difficult and embarrass to talk about it openly and directly.
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