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Abstract
The potential of science to transform lives has been highlighted by a number of scholars. This means that critical socio-scientific issues (SSIs) must be integrated into science curricula. Development of context-specific scientific knowledge and twenty-first-century learning skills in science education could be used to address SSIs such as communicable diseases including HIV and AIDS. However the extent to which SSIs are integrated in science curricula is not well documented, particularly in developing countries. The current study was done in South Africa in order to explore the integration of SSIs into the secondary school Life Sciences curriculum. We utilised qualitative document analysis exploring the integration of HIV/AIDS content knowledge and twenty-first-century learning and science process skills. Results indicate that there is minimal HIV/AIDS content in the Life Sciences curriculum. Furthermore, there are several critical twenty-first century learning and science process skills that are not incorporated. The Life Sciences curriculum also fails to direct students and teachers to scientifically reliable resources that could be used to learn about HIV/AIDS and assist in skills development. We conclude that the Life Sciences curriculum is not well utilised to teach content knowledge related to SSIs. Even though learners may develop twenty-first century learning skills, they probably lack content knowledge in which the skills could be useful. We argue that there is a need to revise the manner in which curriculum content is selected.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Lindelani Mnguni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0361-0002