We are pleased to share this reflection by an educator and one of our Reimagining RSE trailblazers. In the post, published on her Substack, Tasha reflects on her work facilitating discussions with boys about relationships, gender expectations and social norms. With her permission, we are linking to the piece here because it captures something that sits at the heart of the Reimagining RSE project: the value of creating educational spaces where young people can explore complex issues openly, rather than feeling they must immediately align with predetermined answers.
Tasha’s reflection offers a vivid illustration of what a safe uncertainty approach can look like in everyday educational practice. Rather than positioning the classroom as a site where the ‘correct’ views about gender and relationships must simply be delivered and adopted, her account shows how learning spaces can instead invite exploration, reflection and dialogue. This resonates closely with the pedagogical ethos underpinning the Reimagining RSE project.
In much public and policy debate about relationships and sex education, there is a strong tendency toward what might be described as safe certainty: the idea that if educators clearly communicate the right messages – about equality, consent or respect – young people will internalise them and harmful attitudes will recede. While these aims are laudable, we know that young people’s beliefs about gender and relationships are shaped by a much wider set of influences, including peer cultures, family expectations, media environments and online communities. In this context, approaches that focus only on transmitting normative messages can sometimes close down discussion rather than enabling meaningful engagement.
Tasha’s practice reflects a different pedagogical orientation. As she writes, the purpose of the space was not to “turn these boys around into hardcore feminist thinkers” or to demand that they renounce the relational models they had grown up with. Instead, the aim was to cultivate a practice of thinking with uncertainty: encouraging students to explore where their ideas come from, how cultural expectations shape them, and what alternative perspectives might exist. This kind of reflective space allows young people to encounter complexity without feeling that their identities or experiences are immediately being judged or corrected.
This orientation aligns strongly with the concept of safe uncertainty, originally developed within systemic family therapy to describe a stance that combines openness to multiple perspectives with a commitment to relational safety. Applied to RSE, safe uncertainty does not mean that ‘anything goes.’ Rather, it recognises that meaningful ethical reflection emerges most readily when young people are invited to examine their assumptions, social influences and relational values in dialogue with others.
Tasha’s account also illustrates an important practical implication of this stance. By resisting the impulse to steer students immediately toward a predetermined endpoint, educators can create conditions where critical engagement becomes possible. When students feel that their views can be voiced and examined rather than simply corrected, they are often more willing to reflect on them. In this way, spaces that allow for exploration and disagreement can support deeper understanding and ethical reasoning than those that rely primarily on didactic instruction.
For us, Tasha’s reflection captures something essential about the ethos we hope to cultivate through the Reimagining RSE project. Safe uncertainty is not a technique or a scripted lesson plan. It is a pedagogical stance: that recognises the complexity of young people’s social worlds and treats the classroom as a space for inquiry rather than correction.
Tasha’s post offers a thoughtful example of how this stance can be enacted in practice. By inviting students to consider multiple ways of thinking about relationships, gender expectations and cultural norms, Tasha demonstrates how educators can hold space for exploration while still supporting the development of ethical awareness and relational responsibility.
Find out more about Tasha and the work she offers here: https://www.fullcirclefacilitation.co.uk/.