From leadership research to district action: Gender Equality Training for Students in Higher Education: Scoping Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract Background Despite recent improvements, gender inequality persists within the higher education sector, as evidenced by the proportionally greater number of student and academic leadership positions occupied by male students and staff. Gender equality education and training for students may help to develop awareness, knowledge, and skills among individual students, building capacity to address biases and accelerate culture change in higher education institutions. Objective We aimed to identify and explore the existing literature on gender equality training interventions for students in tertiary education, with a particular emphasis on training content, methodology, and outcome evaluation. Methods The 6-stage framework developed by Arskey and O’Malley was used to map the literature related to current best practice in gender equality training for students in higher education. Systematic database searches of peer-reviewed literature were carried out and 3142 titles, 333 abstracts, and 52 full-text articles were screened for eligibility with 14 (27%) articles selected for inclusion in this review. Results The selected studies detailed a range of pedagogical approaches, including didactic lectures, participatory and co-design workshops, reflective writing, and service-learning, with durations ranging from a single interaction to 1 year. Most articles reviewed did not explicitly state their study aims or research question, and the theoretical underpinnings were generally vaguely described. The longer-term impact of most interventions was unclear, as evaluation metrics seldom go beyond the level of adoption. Conclusions This scoping review shows that the literature base for gender equality training for tertiary students lacks coherence, highlighting the need for further work to evaluate its impact. This work provides a foundation for developing training design recommendations. Keywords: gender equality, tertiary education, students, training, higher education institutions

Study methods

The review was structured using the 6-stage framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley [21], as follows: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results; and (6) expert consultation. This approach was chosen due to its well-established rigor and effectiveness [22]. Our review protocol has been peer reviewed to ensure the appropriateness and effectiveness of our methods [17].

Limitations

The search strategy was comprehensively developed by all authors with the support of an experienced librarian to facilitate a thorough and extensive database search. The searches carried out were limited to the 9 databases available to the authors. However, following consultation with the librarian, the process of hand-searching the reference lists of the included articles to identify important studies and gray literature may be considered a strength of this review. It is also important to note the lack of relevant literature available, highlighting a significant gap in the evidence base for this area and this should encourage further research. Considering the accelerating interest in equality, diversity, and inclusion issues in most recent years, relevant work may have been missed in the months since the main literature search was conducted. Excluding studies which focused on mentorship programs, gender equality in health care delivery, and gender studies modules may have excluded potentially useful information. However, following the preliminary database searching and screening, we concluded that these studies did not fully align with the research objectives for this review.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Claire Condron; Mide Power; Midhun Mathew; Siobhan Lucey; Patrick Henn; Tanya Dean; Michelle Kirrane Scott; Walter Eppich; Siobhan M Lucey. Gender Equality Training for Students in Higher Education: Scoping Review. JMIR Medical Education (2025-07-11). https://doi.org/10.2196/60061

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.