More than a decade of addressing HIV and AIDS in education in South Africa

Addressing the impact of the HIV and AIDS epidemic remains a global concern and requires a concerted effort from all. It is now almost 12 years since the XIIIth International AIDS Conference ‘Breaking the silence’ held in Durban in July 2000, and there is no doubt that the field of HIV and AIDS has changed since then. However, the number of new infections in South Africa is still a cause for great concern, placing South Africa at risk of remaining a country that is simply unable to stem the epidemic. Education, often seen as the antidote for social problems, has not yet been given (or had not yet taken) its rightful place in addressing HIV and AIDS. Every sector has a role to play, but the higher education sector in particular, should through its core activities of teaching, research and engagement, be taking the lead in addressing HIV and AIDS and, in fact, the Policy Framework on HIV and AIDS for Higher Education in South Africa (HESA 2008) requires academic institutions to take up this challenge. One initiative within the sector, the HIV and AIDS in Teacher Education Pilot Project in South African Higher Education Institutions (HEAIDS 2010), has brought to light what teacher-educators are doing in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, to address the challenges of the pandemic and provide support to educators to deal with HIV and AIDS at both professional and personal levels. This initiative has also put the spotlight on what teacher-educators could be doing. A key component of the initiative was the piloting and evaluation of a module ‘Being a teacher in the context of the pandemic’ conducted with close to 7000 pre-service and in-service teachers in 23 teacher educational institutions. Despite the success of the project, the challenge still remains for education to sustain prominence and importance alongside the equally important biomedical aspects of prevention and intervention. At the 2010 XVIIIth International AIDS Conference held in Vienna, the absence of issues and speakers from education on the conference programme was striking, clearly demonstrating the need for asserting a strong voice from the education sector as a key player in addressing the HIV and AIDS epidemic.

In September 2010, the fact that many higher education institutions in South Africa were carrying out various initiatives to address HIV and AIDS plus the fact that teacher-educators were dealing with the realities of HIV and AIDS in their curricula, served to provide the impetus for the HIV and AIDS Education research chair in collaboration with HEAIDS organising a symposium ‘HIV & AIDS and Education Research’ with the theme ‘HIV and AIDS ten years on: what key lessons have we learnt as researchers?’ This symposium created an opportunity to give voice to the education sector, represented by invited academics from South African higher education institutions. The value of shared learning became clear through the breadth and depth of the papers and the lively debates that emanated from the presentations. This made for the beginnings of a community of practice of HIV and AIDS education, building on the concept of communities of practices developed by Lave and Wenger (1998) in the early 1990s – able to draw together the richness of human experience and resources around HIV and AIDS education, and sharing collaborative learning towards improved practice. A collective of more than 50 academics from different higher education institutions in South Africa convened to consolidate and expand the existing networks of teacher-educator researchers in HIV and AIDS education. The questions grappled with during the symposium included the following: what has the purpose of our scholarly inquiry been? What have we learnt about our epistemological foundations? Have they shifted? If so, how have they shifted? What have we learnt about our methodological assumptions? How is knowledge produced? What are the gaps in knowledge areas? How can our research have an activist and ‘taking action’ agenda? Interrogating questions such as these can help to identify new trends following the ‘Breaking the silence’ conference of 2000, and to study the successes and challenges in HIV and AIDS education. To this end, this special issue of the Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance offers researchers in the field in South Africa the space to share their research, and simultaneously gives researchers outside of education an opportunity to learn more about research in this area.

This collection brings together six articles written by researchers in teacher education and in a number of different higher education institutions in South Africa. The articles draw on empirical research based on both quantitative and qualitative approaches and are located in positivist, interpretivist and participatory paradigms. They demonstrate some of the key challenges which the education sector faces and also the creative ways in which teacher-educators are responding to the challenges.

The first article by Naydene De Lange, ‘Researching to make a difference: possibilities for social science research in the age of AIDS’, frames social science research within a participatory research paradigm, foregrounding participant engagement and process, which has a ‘research-as-intervention’ focus, and argues for the democratising of research. While such research adheres to the requirements of rigorous knowledge production, it also engages the participants as knowledge producers who, through the research process, are enabled to shift towards taking up their own agency. The use of innovative visual participatory methodologies is put forward as particularly useful when working with marginalised persons, such as those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS, allowing universities to take up their social responsibility and to contribute towards making a difference in the communities they serve.

Focusing on the higher education context, the second article ‘Using HIV and AIDS statistics in pre-service mathematics education to integrate HIV and AIDS education’ by Linda van Laren, recognises the lack of clear understanding most student-teachers have of HIV and AIDS, and draws on a self-study approach to integrate HIV and AIDS into mathematics education. Developing a unit with pre-service teachers which uses HIV statistics, she facilitates their reflection on the possibilities of cross-curricula integration of HIV and AIDS education. She also provides an insight into the changing teaching context and pastoral role of teachers, and the need for further HIV and AIDS education. She concludes that statistics is an appropriate means of initiating the integration of HIV and AIDS into mathematics education.

Turning to HIV and AIDS education in the school context, Lesley Wood, in the third article ‘“Every teacher is a researcher!”: creating indigenous epistemologies and practices for HIV prevention through values-based action research’, explores how teachers in schools can use action research projects to understand gender inequalities and create gender-sensitive school environments. She argues that for HIV prevention interventions to be sustainable and effective, teachers should be actively engaged in the design, implementation and evaluation of the prevention interventions. She presents evidence to justify the claim that action research helps teachers to generate indigenous epistemologies and practices that are not only effective in creating sustainable and empowering learning environments for HIV prevention education, but that support teaching and learning in general.

Omar Esau, a keen chess player himself, in ‘“Checkmating HIV/AIDS”: using chess to break the silence in the classroom’, demonstrates in this fourth article how using an action research approach positions the teacher as a researcher and critical change agent in an HIV and AIDS-challenged society. He provides an insight into how chess can be used as an educational tool to contribute to breaking the culture of silence concerning HIV and AIDS and sex and sexuality in the classroom and also to avoid ‘AIDS fatigue’.

The fifth article, by Misheck Ndebele, Mambwe Kasese-Hara and Michael Greyling, ‘Application of the information, motivation and behavioural skills (IMB) model for targeting HIV risk behaviour amongst adolescent learners in South Africa’, explores how an Information, Motivation and Behavioural Skills model which they developed, is used with adolescents as an intervention in two schools. Using a pre-test and post-test design to test out the model, they conclude that although there were positive changes observed in the levels of HIV and AIDS information, and in the motivation and behavioural skills of learner participants, these changes may not be entirely attributable to the intervention. What is key though is their argument for taking into consideration the behavioural, structural and socio-cultural contexts in which adolescents live, when developing intervention models.

Finally, the last article, ‘Equipping educators to address HIV and AIDS: a review of selected teacher education initiatives’ by Bill Holderness, concludes this special issue, and draws our attention to a spectrum of educational initiatives in higher education in sub-Saharan Africa (and more specifically, in South Africa) which have been designed to equip educators with information and skills to manage HIV and AIDS in their personal and professional lives. Holderness reviews operational and functioning HIV and AIDS education endeavours drawing on his own experiences of HIV and AIDS education to highlight the importance of experiential and context-specific action-based learning and research as part of the social and educational aspects of HIV and AIDS. He concludes that such endeavours can contribute to breaking the silence and reducing stigma while at the same time, equipping teacher-educators and teachers with the skills to provide care and support for learners and colleagues made vulnerable by HIV.

Taken as a whole, the six articles in this issue re-assert, we believe, the voice of education and educators in addressing HIV and AIDS in South Africa.