PRE-SERVICE SEXUAL HEALTH EDUCATION TRAINING OF ELEMENTARY, SECONDARY, AND PHYSICAL HEALTH EDUCATION TEACHERS IN CANADIAN FACULTIES OF EDUCATION.

The article examines pre-service sexual health education training of elementary, secondary and physical and health education teachers in Canada. The effectiveness of school-based sexual health education depends, in part, on the preparation of the teachers who provide it. In the absence of published literature on the extent to which the Bachelor of Education programs at Canadian university faculties of education provide pre-service training for this role; the present study surveyed all such programs in elementary, secondary, and physical and health education to determine the extent to which their students received sexual health education training. On an average, 15.5% of the B.Ed. programs surveyed provided compulsory training in sexual health education; 26.2% had related optional courses although respondents estimated that a little over one third of their students took one of these optional courses. Overall, 39.3% provided compulsory and/or optional sexual health training (range = 32.4% for elementary education to 52.4% for physical and health education). The programs that did provide sexual health training generally assigned average or above average emphasis to all three of the key components of sexual health education (knowledge, motivation and skill development), although there was considerable variability between individual programs in time allocated and topic emphasis.