Ts. Dr Jaysuman Pusppanathan, a dedicated Deputy Director of the Sports Innovation Technology Centre (SITC) at the Institute of Human Centered Engineering (iHumEn), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) was invited as keynote speaker at the international conference organized by the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and the Universiti Malaya (UM). Dr Jaysuman has successfully delivered his keynote speech on “Islamic Sex Education; Cross-Cultural Sexuality Education”.
In his keynote address, he mentioned that since 2019, NTNU and UM in Malaysia have continued to conduct academic exchanges and research collaboration, hoping to enhance the development of sex education in the two countries and the event was focused on “Cross-Cultural Sexuality Education”.
Ts Dr Jaysuman gives an insightful sharing on the address topic. Malaysia is a multi-religious country, which mainly follows Islam, and religion greatly influences sexual concepts and behaviors. Therefore, in implementing sex education, it is necessary to consider how to respect the differences between different religious beliefs in sex education. Taiwan is an open island country, and the rate of marriage between Chinese and other countries is relatively high.
In 2020, the number of children of new residents in schools at all levels in Taiwan totaled 305,000, accounting for 7.3% of the total number of students. Teachers in Taiwan also need to start thinking about how to design sexual perspectives of different cultures, religious beliefs, and races into the curriculum and teaching when implementing sex education for students by implementing “culturally responsive teaching” and incorporating the issue of “multicultural education” into sex education.
He added that this year, the academic exchange of sexuality education between NTNU and the UM is pleased to join the two countries’ sexuality education civil organizations, such as Taiwan Xingling Medical Foundation, Taiwan Sexuality Education Society and Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. In addition, excellent teachers joined to set up a Taiwan-Malaysia “CrossÂCultural Education” teaching design community.
At this conference, five middle school teachers from Taiwan and five Chinese teachers from Malaysia were invited to form a curriculum co-preparation team to share the research and development through the two countries’ co-preparation, the cross-cultural education curriculum. It will focus on introducing other social and cultural differences into the junior high school sex education curriculum and how to carry out
“cultural response teaching” in sexuality education.
