Storytelling and Picture-Based Educational Interventions for HIV/AIDS Knowledge and Attitudes among Early Childhood Educators: An Empty Systematic Review and Conceptual Pathway
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/tunascendekia.v9i1.12856Keywords:
HIV/AIDS, early childhood educators, storytelling, pictorial education, systematic review, empty review, conceptual frameworkAbstract
Early childhood educators are well placed to shape young children’s earliest health related understanding and to model nonstigmatising responses to children affected by HIV, yet their own HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes may be incomplete. Storytelling and pictorial approaches are common in early childhood education and are theoretically suited to communicating complex health concepts, but their effectiveness for HIV/AIDS education among early childhood educators has not been synthesised. This systematic review aimed to identify and appraise evidence on the effectiveness of storytelling and pictorial educational interventions on HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes among early childhood educators. The review was reported according to PRISMA 2020; no protocol was registered. On 6 October 2026, seven keyword queries in English and Indonesian were run through Google Search and supplemented by citation searching. No bibliographic database (e.g., PubMed, ERIC, Scopus, or Garuda) was searched, and screening was performed by a single reviewer; the search should therefore be regarded as preliminary. Eligible studies were randomised, nonrandomised, or pretest posttest intervention studies that delivered a storytelling, narrative, or pictorial HIV/AIDS intervention to early childhood educators and reported knowledge, attitude, or related outcomes. Risk of bias tools specific to each study design and a structured narrative synthesis were planned. A total of 66 records were identified (51 after deduplication); four reports were assessed in full and three reports identified through citation searching could not be retrieved. No study met the eligibility criteria. The closest evidence came from teacher training studies in primary and secondary schools, including a multimedia cluster randomised trial in Kenya, and from a pretest posttest evaluation of an HIV/AIDS workshop for early childhood educators in Zambia whose storytelling or pictorial components could not be verified. Within the limits of this preliminary search, the effectiveness of storytelling and pictorial HIV/AIDS education for early childhood educators remains unknown. It contributes a transparent map of this evidence gap, a theory informed conceptual pathway, and recommendations for controlled trials in early childhood education settings, including Indonesia.
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