Human Sexuality Curriculum in RT/TR

I received the information below on human sexuality from colleague and friend David Howard Ph.D. David teaches RT/TR at Indiana State University and has directed the information toward RT/TR faculty. Here is the information from David:

Dear Colleagues: I am interested in seeing how other recreation therapy educators are addressing the topic of human sexuality in their curriculum.

Briefly creating a context for this topic, human sexuality is specifically mentioned in accreditation standards (8.06:03), and introductory leisure textbooks (such as Godbey’s “Leisure in your life”) have long included chapters covering leisure and sexuality. As for RT/TR, personally, every place I have worked in or heard of recreation therapists working in are settings where issues related to human sexuality are indirectly and sometimes directly part of the work experience.

I’d also share that last year our department’s annual spring fieldtrip took us to Urbana-Champaign (IL) and I took recreation therapy students to several sites relevant to health care and rehabilitation. One of these sites was the Cunningham Children’s home where we took a tour of the facilities and had the chance to explore client issues. Amidst that discussion, our host shared that recreation therapists teach the treatment center’s sex education/awareness group for boys and girls. I know many other RT’s conduct similar programs. The question then becomes how do we best encourage students to explore personal values and attitudes, prepare them to experience (perhaps differing or dysfunctional) sexual attitudes and behavior exhibited by clients, and then how to best intervene (inclusive of teaching them when and how to make referrals).

Without taking too much of your time, I’d welcome comments about how your program’s curriculum addresses: (a) the topic of leisure and sexuality or (b) prepares recreation therapy students to be aware, comfortable, and capable to professionally address issues related to sexuality and health/disability of their clients or patients.

If you have some more time and wish to explore and share comments on a couple documents I will be glad to send them to you as attachments if you will contact me. One document is from the Cunningham Children’s home sex education/awareness curriculum taught by recreation therapists; and the second is a composite PDF of how I’ve taught the topic of sexuality as it relates to health and disability (within a Trends/Issues class). In sharing this, I assume individual responsibility for its content, yet do feel compelled to give credit to colleagues Dr. Marieke Van Puymbroeck (Indiana U), Dr. Rhonda Nelson (Temple U), and Dr. Jerome Singleton (Dalhousie U) who have presented on this topic with me at national conferences and or greatly influenced and supported this vein of academic scholarship.

I greatly look forward to any discussion or questions this generates…(Please comment on this post or contact me.)

Comments to me personally are very welcome – use either dhoward10@isugw.indstate.edu or dkh7lives@yahoo.com

Thank you - David Howard, PhD

Dr. David Howard
Indiana State University
College of Nursing, Health and Human Services
COB 1209
Terre Haute, Indiana 47809
812-237-2188 (ISU)
812-236-9766 (cell)