Abstract

• The main purpose of this study is to investigate the pre-service teachers’ perception towards sex education. Quantitative survey research method was applied for this study. The sample of the study consisted of 300 pre-service teachers from first, third and fifth year of Yangon University of Education. Random sampling technique was used in selecting the participants. The instrument used in this study was mainly based on Perception of Students’, Teachers’ and Parents’ towards Sex Education Questionnaire (Eko Jimmy, Abeshi, Osonaw Kalu, Uwaneda & Offiong Dominic, 2013) and the researcher revised some parts of the questionnaire after it was validated by experts from Department of Educational Psychology and Department of Methodology in Yangon University of Education. The findings in this study revealed that 87% of the participants agreed that sex education should be compulsory and 96% of the participants agreed that it can prevent sex related problems. Moreover, 92% of the participants agreed that sex education should be taught by health personnel and 86% agreed that it should be taught by any qualified teacher. And 86% of the participants agreed that sex education should be taught starting from secondary level, 78% of the participants agreed that it should be taught as an independent subject and 50% of the participants agreed that boys and girls should be taught together. About 99% of the participants felt that such area as sexually transmitted diseases, abstinence, how to prevent sexual abuses and what to do in case of being assaulted or raped should form the core content of sex education in schools. Masturbation was suggested to be excluded by 50%. Abortion was suggested to be excluded by 98% and contraceptive usage was suggested to be excluded by 66% of the participants. And 80% of the participants claimed that they experienced the sex education from media.