Abstract Book of the 3rd World Conference on Gender Equality
Year: 2025
[PDF]
SPARK: Igniting teacher and parent confidence and competency levels in delivering quality Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)
Dr. Seline Keating
ABSTRACT:
Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) plays a vital role in promoting the health and well-being of children and young people. Teacher and parent confidence and capacity are current barriers to quality CSE. The overall aim of this EU funded project is to develop and implement CSE courses across 5 countries, using the European approach to micro-credentials, to equip school communities. Target groups are school leaders (500), teachers (650), preservice teachers (500), parents (500), and trainers (100) to sustain impact
CSE expertise will be exchanged across the 8 partners via online/offline meetings. Interviews and focus groups with target groups in each partner country (5) will inform resources and the content of the training modules (3), micro-credential courses (2) and a MOOC. A CSE curricula resource bank will be devised. Training will be delivered to, and evaluated by, target groups. All outputs will be monitored and assessed for quality assurance. The project website, articles and conference will share the outputs.
The project outputs will address the current issue, in partner countries, of low teacher confidence and competency levels in CSE. It will empower whole-school communities to adopt quality CSE practices. It will provide school leaders, teachers, and preservice teachers with the skill-set needed to create an inclusive CSE culture and deliver meaningful CSE lessons, with parental cooperation. Trainers will sustain the results, while the conference will disseminate and extend synergies across the EU.
Keywords: comprehensive sexuality education, LGBTQI inclusion, whole-school communities