We are thrilled to announce the publication of our book: Reimagining Relationships and Sex Education: A Safe Uncertainty Approach to Adolescent Intimacies.
In this book, we bring together the ideas underpinning our approach to Reimagining RSE. It is the culmination of our research up to this point, in a short accessible book designed for practitioners, educators and academics. We aim not only to give you the academic underpinning for our ideas, but most importantly practical tools you can use right away. In the pages, you will find explanations of our vision for RSE, alongside activities, conversation starter points, tips on safeguarding and much more…
To buy your copy go to: https://bookstore.emerald.com/reimagining-relationships-and-sex-education-hb-9781805928003.html or read to the end to find out how you can win a free copy!
Young people today are navigating relationships, sexuality and identity in contexts that are emotionally complex and rapidly changing, particularly online. Across classrooms, the same dilemma repeatedly emerges: the topics young people most want to talk about – intimacy, desire, boundaries, peer status, the emotional turbulence of early relationships – are precisely those that adults feel least equipped to discuss. In recent years, the burden on RSE has grown heavier. Educators are asked to prevent misogyny, tackle image-based sexual abuse, respond to harmful online content, address LGBTQ+ inclusion sensitively and maintain calm amid culture wars. Yet they are rarely given the training, time or structural support needed to do this well.
Faced with these pressures, it is understandable that schools turn to fixed answers and standardised PowerPoints focusing on the law, checklists of rules and scripted messages that appear to keep everyone safe. In the book, we show how this focus on certainty can suppress the very conversations young people need most. It can make their real experiences feel invisible or shameful, and leave them unprepared for the complexities of connection, conflict and growth.
We introduce Safe Uncertainty as an alternative starting point for both understanding adolescent intimacies and for RSE practice. It starts from a simple, important truth: uncertainty is not a problem to eliminate, but a reality to support young people to navigate.
Safe uncertainty: neither rigid nor laissez-faire
Rather than presenting intimacy as something controllable through rules alone, Reimagining RSE shows how relationships are shaped by emotion, power, belonging and desire. It argues that effective RSE must move beyond risk-management, and instead equip young people to reflect, connect and make sense of their experiences. Safe uncertainty offers a way to do this, balancing strong safeguarding boundaries with space for exploration, vulnerability and critical thinking.
Drawing from systemic therapy, we define safe uncertainty as a relational stance that holds firm safeguarding boundaries while creating space for ambiguity, multiple perspectives and ‘not knowing’. In education, this means recognising that sexuality (in its broadest terms) and relationships are developmental – full of flux, contradiction and experimentation – and that young people grow when allowed to sit with complexity rather than being hurried toward closure or resolution.
In the book, we unpack this through the four quadrants of safety and certainty, showing how dominant approaches drift either toward unsafe certainty (rigid, moralising, shut-down teaching) or unsafe uncertainty (overwhelm without structure). The goal is to shift to the quadrant educators rarely get support to inhabit: a space where curiosity and emotional safety co-exist.
Chapters that meet the real challenges educators face
Each chapter takes on a major area of contemporary RSE and asks a central question: how can we better support young people when the realities they navigate are rarely clear-cut? Instead of assuming there are straightforward solutions, the book works with the emotional nuance and social complexity that educators and students both describe. In doing so, we explore what is possible when RSE acknowledges that relationships often involve mixed feelings, competing pressures and evolving identities and, in turn, creates space to think and talk openly about those complexities.
- Consent: Instead of treating consent as a clear verbal transaction, the book places attention on hesitation, desire, intoxication, fear of embarrassment, the need for belonging and how gendered scripts shape communication. Rather than intensifying messages of blame or liability, young people are supported to examine the dynamics that make ethically attuned decision-making difficult and how they might act with care even when scripts falter.
- Gender power dynamics: Without minimising inequality or harm, the book avoids polarising framings that position boys as problems and girls as victims. It acknowledges the intense pressures on both: boys negotiating accusations of toxicity alongside expectations of control; girls navigating empowerment rhetoric amid ongoing misogyny. Safe uncertainty invites both to reflect on status, vulnerability and the emotional labour of growing into gendered identities.
- Digital intimacies: The book responds to young people’s insistence that the online/offline divide is not real in their lives. It recognises the desire, affirmation and community that digital intimacy can enable, while still confronting coercion, surveillance and shame. Rather than warning that intimate images will ‘ruin your future’, it encourages reflection on why young people take these risks and how cultures of judgment can make breaches far more harmful than the act of sharing itself.
- Pornography and sexual media: Young people already use media to learn about sex; ignoring this only deepens the distance between RSE and real life. The book offers a way to address pleasure, fantasy, arousal, discomfort and representation without moralising, in turn helping students develop critical literacy that is sensitive to emotion and identity, not just information.
- Healthy relationships: Instead of presenting relational health as a checklist of virtues or traits, the book invites a deeper understanding of insecurity, attachment, conflict, repair and emotional regulation, all framed as dynamic skills that evolve through practice, reflection and care.
What this looks like in the classroom
The practical guidance throughout the book is grounded in practice, including learning from our pilot RSE programme in two secondary schools, which comprised two days of teaching, educator training and a parents’ session. The young people who participated responded powerfully when adults demonstrated curiosity and flexibility rather than fear or judgement.
The book shows what it means to:
- co-author ground rules that genuinely enable dialogue
- create safe(r) spaces for learning and exploration – recognising that not all young people feel safe in school
- scaffold ‘uncertainty exposure’ so conversations stretch young people without overwhelming them
- use scenarios and dilemma-based questions to explore values, rather than telling students what the values should be
- model ‘authoritative doubt’, where adults show confidence and care while acknowledging the limits of their knowledge
These practices make disclosures more likely – and more safely managed – because young people trust that adults will take them seriously without panicking or shutting the topic down. They will find it easier to share the thoughts they have on their mind, even if they are embarrassed.
Importantly, we recognise the emotional labour and professional vulnerability involved in this work. Safe uncertainty does not ask educators to have all the answers. The opposite, if anything. It encourages a shift in stance to authoritative doubt – modelling ‘not knowing’ and guiding students while acknowledging complexity. When adults demonstrate that not knowing is not dangerous, young people feel more able to bring their real questions and experiences into the room.
Who this book is for
Although rooted in classroom encounters, the implications of safe uncertainty extend beyond the RSE lesson itself. This approach has significant relevance for safeguarding teams working across peer-on-peer issues, for school leaders shaping culture and accountability, and for policymakers considering the purpose and limits of statutory guidance. It will also be of value to researchers seeking to understand young people’s sexual cultures not just as risks to be managed but as relational, developmental and emotional experiences – both online and offline.
Ultimately, it is designed for those responsible for creating the conditions in which young people can take part in RSE that is not only compliant, but meaningful.
Why this matters now
Ultimately, Reimagining RSE sets out a way forward for those seeking to do more than prevent harm and who want RSE to enable young people to form relationships rooted in care, respect and agency. We offer a framework that is grounded, practical and hopeful, at a time when uncertainty can feel overwhelming for the adults as well as the adolescents.
We argue that safety in relationships is not the absence of risk – it is the presence of skills. Emotional literacy, perspective taking, comfort with discomfort, and the ability to negotiate boundaries are all skills strengthened through encountering challenge, not by removing it. Safe uncertainty is therefore not a retreat from responsibility; it is a more robust expression of it.