Background: Comprehensive sexual education is an educational approach that addresses the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social aspects of sexuality. It includes sexual education topics such as puberty, menstruation, family life and relationships, sexuality, human rights, sexual abuse, and gender-based violence. When comprehensive sexual education is taught consistently and age appropriately, meaning it meets the cognitive and emotional maturity and needs of students, it expands survival, health, and life benefits for young people everywhere. However, to provide an efficient, compressive sexual education curriculum, educators must be equipped with the proper training.
Objectives: This scoping review aimed to map the existing literature on educators’ training in comprehensive sexual education, identify the facilitators and barriers influencing both the training and the implementation of comprehensive sexual education curricula, and highlight research gaps associated with comprehensive sexual education training.
Methods: A mixed-methods scoping review was conducted using the databases PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, CINAHL, and PsycInfo. Narrative synthesis and data mapping were used to analyze study characteristics for all the included studies. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative and mixed methods studies, and thematic analysis was used to analyze common themes and sub-themes for qualitative studies.
Results: A total of 74 studies (qualitative n=31; quantitative n=24; mixed methods n=19) were included in this review. The results of these studies revealed that the most effective training method is a combination of in-person and online approaches, and effective training durations should be a clear representation of the program content and must include technical support strategies such as follow-up or feedback methods. Increased educator knowledge of certain comprehensive sexual education topics impacted their confidence levels and caused significant attitude shifts. Barriers to training were identified as the lack of pre-service training, inadequate training, and institutional resistance. Facilitating factors that influenced post-training implementation were identified as newly acquired instructional strategies, technical support strategies, and networking opportunities. Barriers to implementation were recognized as resistance from educators due to impractical instructional strategies, comprehensive sexual education curricula that didn’t align with personal beliefs, mixed-gender classrooms, and time constraints. Parental and institutional support were identified as both facilitating factors and barriers to comprehensive sexual education post-training implementation. Additionally, research gaps identified in the review mainly included an underrepresentation in the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia regions.
Conclusion: The findings of this scoping review have provided researchers with evidence-based knowledge to make practical recommendations for an efficient comprehensive sexual education training program for educators, which will subsequently improve comprehensive sexual education and sexual reproductive health for students worldwide. The results of this review have also provided a basis to advocate for policy change regarding comprehensive sexual education educator training and curricula implementation guidelines.