Moral Development,HIV/AIDS Knowledge,and Attitude toward HIV/AIDS among Counseling Students in the United States

People living with HIV/AIDS will likely require services from mental health professionals to address the complex psychosocial effects of the illness. In the United States, counseling students are not likely to be well prepared to serve clients affected by HIV/AIDS, and little is known about their HIV-related knowledge and attitudes. The present study assessed the moral development, HIV/AIDS knowledge, and attitudes toward HIV/AIDS among a national sample of counseling students in the United States. Results indicated that students held biases toward people living with HIV/AIDS and that their attitudes toward HIV/AIDS were inversely related to their level of moral development.     

Knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about HIV/AIDS among Hindu students from a government women's college of South India

The purpose of the study was to determine the attitudes of Hindu students from a government women's college of South India toward people with AIDS, to assess their beliefs about HIV/AIDS, to determine their knowledge level about HIV/AIDS and to determine how they gain information about HIV/AIDS. The sample consisted of four hundred female students at a government funded Women's University in Southern India who participated in an AIDS survey research project. Participants completed a survey asking about their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about HIV/AIDS. Results indicated that a majority of the participants learned about HIV/AIDS from reading material while some learned about HIV/AIDS from school classes, and only a few learned from family members. Thirty-nine percent had never communicated to any one about HIV/AIDS. The results indicated that the majority of Indian women in this study did not know about explicit sexual behaviors which transmit the virus. The study also showed that those Indian women university students, by and large, are accepting of people with AIDS but still have fears of getting HIV/AIDS. This data suggest a need to increase educational efforts at the university. It was suggested that counselors take responsibility for helping this population of Indian women become self advocates, particularly in a society which permits men to have multiple sexual relationships. Educators and counselors working with this population must initiate programs that impart accurate and specific knowledge to these female college students and begin to address the multiple psychosocial issues related to HIV/AIDS.     

高校HIV/AIDS健康教育的意义与方法

了解高校HIV／AIDS健康教育的意义,掌握具体的教学方法,加强在大学生人群中开展HIV／AIDS知识的宣传,发挥大学生在HIV／AIDS防治工作中的作用,对控制AIDS的流行具有重要的现实意义。     

健康与污名——一项关于高校学生针对艾滋病患者态度的定量研究

自1985年我国发现第一例艾滋病病例以来,艾滋病患者长期处于社会排斥与社会隔离之中,他们饱受歧视与压抑,成为丧失部分权利和地位的"身份受损"群体——污名群体.本研究对北京市某高校部分学生进行了抽样调查,认为对艾滋病知识的掌握、成长阶段以及影响性知识、艾滋病知识获取的主客观因素显著干预高校学生对于艾滋病患者的态度,并指出艾滋病的"内部可控性"和"消极符号化含义"对延续艾滋病患者群体污名化处境具有负面作用.     

The importance of levels of knowledge in developing a unified theory for HIV/AIDS counselling: A comparison of two culturally different samples

This paper qualitatively compares the responses concerning knowledge about HIV/AIDS prevention methods that were obtained from two cross-culturally different samples of students who were of a sexually active age. Canadian and Zimbabwean education students were sampled. The responses are presented and analyzed with the main purpose of placing the findings in the context of Balmer's (1991) proposal of a unified theory for HIV/AIDS counselling. The major focus of this paper is on HIV/AIDS infection prevention strategies. The differences in responses across the two groups sampled suggest that it would be important to begin individual and group-based prevention strategies with exploration of individual levels of knowledge. Finally, implications for research are discussed.     

HIV/AIDS knowledge and information sources among deaf and hearing college students

A sample of 34 deaf undergraduate college students at Gallaudet University and 46 hearing undergraduate college students at the University of Maryland Baltimore County completed a questionnaire that asked about their knowledge and sources of information concerning the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). The deaf students had significantly lower scores on an "HIV/AIDS Knowledge Index" than the hearing students. This difference could not be explained by the deaf students' gender, class standing, family structure, or father's or mother's education level. The deaf students obtained more of their information about HIV/AIDS from family and friends than the hearing students, who relied to a greater extent on teachers, television, and reading material. The interpersonal sources used by the deaf students are more prone to factual errors than formal sources. Deaf students need methods of educating themselves about HIV/AIDS that are more accurate and that recognize the importance of sources as well as the content of information.     

The Influence of Approach and Avoidance Goals on Conceptual Change

ABSTRACT

Recently, conceptual change research has been experiencing a warming trend (G. M. Sinatra, 2005) whereby motivational and affective factors are being explored in the conceptual change process. The purpose of this study is to explore the 2 × 2 framework of achievement goal theory in relation to students’ conceptual change learning for a specific topic in biology, HIV/AIDS. The authors hypothesized that those with approach goals (mastery approach and performance approach) would demonstrate greater posttest conceptual change in their understanding of HIV/AIDS than those with avoidance goals. Participants were 206 undergraduates in introductory-level college biology courses. Participants were provided a 1,004-word HIV/AIDS text and were pre- and posttested on their conceptual knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Results of an analysis of covariance indicated that approach-oriented students demonstrated greater conceptual HIV/AIDS change at posttest than avoidance-oriented students. Results are discussed in light of the warming trend and achievement goal theory.     

Building Scientific Literacy in HIV/AIDS Education: A case study of Uganda

The term scientific literacy is defined differently in different contexts. The term literacy simply refers to the ability for one to read and write, but recent studies in language literacy have extended this definition. New literacy research seeks a redefinition in terms of how skills are used rather than how they are learned. Contemporary perspectives on literacy as a transfer of learned skills into daily life practises capture the understanding of what it means to be scientifically literate. Scientific literacy requires students to be able to use their scientific knowledge independently in the everyday world. Some models for teaching towards scientific literacy have been suggested including inquiry‐based learning embedded in constructivist epistemologies. The inquiry‐based model is posited to be effective at bringing about in‐depth understanding of scientific concepts through engaging students’ preconceptions. In order to establish whether directly engaging students’ preconceptions can lead to in‐depth understanding of the science of HIV/AIDS, a case study was designed to elucidate students’ prior knowledge. From questionnaires and classroom observations, Ugandan Grade 11 students’ persistent preconceptions were explored in follow‐up focus group discussions. The inquiry process was used to engage students with their own perceptions of HIV/AIDS during the focus group discussions. Findings suggest that students need to dialogue with each other as they reflect on their beliefs about HIV/AIDS. Dialogue enabled students to challenge their beliefs while making connections between ‘school’ and ‘home’ knowledge.     

HIV/AIDS-Anxiety among Adolescent Students in Botswana

This research investigated the incidence of HIV/AIDS anxiety among students in Botswana. The sample comprised 240 randomly selected students from six schools in three districts in Botswana, with data collected via a questionnaire. Percentages and Chi-square were used to analyze the extent to which the students were anxious about HIV/AIDS and if there was a significant gender difference in this regard. Findings showed that the students were anxious on several fronts about HIV/AIDS; specifically that they and their relations might contract the virus and that they might lose family members. There was gender difference in terms of anxiety about the possibility that relations might become infected. The role of the counsellor in reducing HIV/AIDS anxiety among students in communities living with HIV/AIDS is discussed.     

An investigation into the effects of LMS on headteachers’ use of time

Background: HIV/AIDS poses a major threat to development and poverty alleviation, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education has been declared an effective preventative approach and the single most powerful weapon against HIV transmission. However, there is a paucity of research on the type of education required, the appropriate teaching/learning methods, and generally how such education influences change of attitudes and behaviour on the part of the students.

Purpose: In the context of Swaziland, a country with the highest HIV prevalence rate at 42.6%, this study explores how students at the University of Swaziland perceive an HIV/AIDS course. The students' comments cover the course content, the teaching/learning methods used in the course, the regulations governing the course, and the impact of the course.

Sample and design: A sample of 15 students was randomly selected from all the year 1 Faculty of Agriculture students to form focus group 1. Another sample of 15 was randomly selected from year 3 students who were enrolled on a new programme to form focus group 2. Of the 15 invited students in each focus group, 11 (seven males and four females) attended the focus group 1 meeting, and 12 (eight females and four males) attended the focus group two meeting. A pilot-tested and pre-prepared interview schedule was used during the focus group interviews to collect information on the students' perceptions. This data was analysed using themes.

Results: The findings reveal that the perceptions of the two groups were very similar. The students identified some topics that they felt were treated in great depth, and other topics, particularly dealing with traditional healers, that they felt should be added to the course content. They further criticised the excessive use of the lecture method in teaching the course and recommended that more visual materials, presentations by HIV-positive people and workers, as well as site visits to relevant places should be encouraged to make the course more interesting and give it greater educational value. Overall, the students felt that the course had been effective in changing their attitudes and behaviour. The students cited numerous benefits that they had derived from this course and recommended that it should be offered to all first-year students at the university.

Conclusions and recommendations: This small scale study suggests that providing HIV/AIDS education is an important intervention in changing the attitudes and behaviour of university students and in combating the spread of HIV. It further stresses the importance of engaging all the relevant stakeholders, particularly the students, in working out the content of such a course.     

对在校大学生艾滋病宣传教育效果的调查研究

随着艾滋病在我国的蔓延,经性传播感染艾滋病病毒的高学历人群比例显著增加,在校大学生应该成为预防艾滋病重点人群.本文通过对广东6所高校在校大学生的问卷调查发现:在校大学生的艾滋病相关知识认知度偏低,艾滋病相关态度较为积极,艾滋病相关行为风险性较高;同时由于在校大学生对艾滋病的知识与态度具有显著相关性,且不同的宣传途径对相关的知识、态度、行为的影响不同;因此艾滋病预防教育需要学校、媒体、社会等多方面的配合,政府在其中应起协调和促进作用.     

Perceptual Influence of Ugandan Biology Students’ Understanding of HIV/AIDS

In Uganda, curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS has largely depended on public and private media messages about the disease. Media campaigns based on Uganda’s cultural norms of communication are metaphorical, analogical and simile-like. The topic of HIV/AIDS has been introduced into the Senior Three (Grade 11) biology curriculum in Uganda. To what extent do students’ pre-conceptions of the disease, based on these media messages influence students’ development of conceptual understanding of the disease, its transmission and prevention? Of significant importance is the impact the conceptions students have developed from the indirect media messages on classroom instruction on HIV/AIDS. The study is based in a theoretical framework of conceptual change in science learning. An interpretive case study to determine the impact of Ugandan students’ conceptions or perceptions on classroom instruction about HIV/AIDS, involving 160 students aged 15–17, was conducted in four different Ugandan high schools: girls boarding, boys boarding, mixed boarding, and mixed day. Using questionnaires, focus group discussions, recorded biology lessons and informal interviews, students’ preconceptions of HIV/AIDS and how these impact lessons on HIV/AIDS were discerned. These preconceptions fall into four main categories: religious, political, conspiracy and traditional African worldviews. Results of data analysis suggest that students’ prior knowledge is persistent even after biology instructions. This has implications for current teaching approaches, which are mostly teacher-centred in Ugandan schools. A rethinking of the curriculum with the intent of offering science education programs that promote understanding of the science of HIV/AIDS as opposed to what is happening now—insensitivity to misconceptions about the disease—is needed.     

A Study of the Relationship Between Child Care Providers' Use of HIV/AIDS Information Sources, Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and Attitudes Toward Caregiving Policies

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that leads to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), has been a part of American society for over two decades. Today, HIV/AIDS touches all demographic groups, including young children. It is for this reason that child care providers need to be informed about HIV/AIDS and related policies that impact their work with young children. The purpose of this study was to examine child care providers' use of different HIV/AIDS information sources in relationship to their knowledge about HIV/AIDS and their response to common childhood behaviors and classroom situations involving an HIV-infected child. Results suggest that different types of information sources are associated with different aspects of providers' knowledge about and response to pediatric HIV/AIDS. Implications for the planning and delivery of HIV/AID training involving child care providers are discussed.     

HIV/AIDS knowledge, attitudes, and risk-behaviors among African-American and Caribbean college women

The HIV/AIDS knowledge, attitudes, and sexualrisk-taking behaviors of a sample ofAfrican-American and Caribbean college wereinvestigated. The study also explored therelationship between the women's self-esteem,self-efficacy, sexual communication, andreligiosity and their HIV knowledge, attitudes,and risk behaviors. Findings revealed thatwhile both groups of women were fairlyknowledgeable about HIV/AIDS transmission andprevention, their sexual risk-taking behaviorswere still relatively high. TheAfrican-American women were more knowledgeableabout HIV/AIDS than were the Caribbean women. Also, the African-American women engaged insignificantly fewer sexual risk-takingbehaviors than their Caribbean femalecounterparts. No significant cultural groupdifferences emerged on attitudes towardHIV/AIDS as a disease, HIV infected persons,and AIDS-related issues. A number ofsignificant correlations were found. The studyconcludes that HIV/AIDS counseling andprevention approaches that are ethnic,cultural, and gender appropriate are vital forincreasing both cognitive and behavioralchanges in culturally diverse young women.     

UNESCO艾滋病预防教育策略初探

艾滋病已成为危害人类社会的国际问题.到目前为止,预防教育是解决艾滋病问题最为有效的方法.联合国教科文组织提出艾滋病预防教育的目的是增进人们对艾滋病传播和预防的知识、意识、技能,形成和树立正确的态度和价值观念,减少艾滋病的传染,减轻艾滋病对社会造成的影响,同时缓解艾滋病对教育系统带来的压力.本文介绍了UNESCO在全球性和地区性两个层面实施艾滋病预防教育的策略,并讨论了这些策略的意义.     

AIDS Prevention for Adolescents at Risk

This paper describes a training program aimed at preparing 14 MSW students to teach AIDS prevention to adolescents at risk of HIV infection (i.e., increase knowledge, alter attitudes and teach risk-reduction behaviors). The majority of the students perceived this training not only as helpful in preparing them for the task at hand, but also in improving their overall social work skills and their chances to get a social work job in the future. In this paper, we also discuss problems related to AIDS prevention that arose during the training, such as rape and risk-reduction precautions and whether or not AIDS counselors should recommend taking the AIDS test.     

Educational research within postcolonial Africa: a critique of HIV/AIDS research in Botswana

This paper uses the postcolonial lens to highlight that mainstream research in postcolonial societies still ignores, marginalizes and suppresses other knowledge systems and ways of knowing. The marginalization of local knowledge systems, it is argued, was established in the colonial times that relegated all things indigenous or from the colonized communities as unworthy, uncivilized, barbaric and superstitious. Systematic efforts to inscribe Western ways of cultural, economic, political and social systems were applied during the colonial times and maintained in the post‐independence era. The educational system did not escape the colonial construction of the colonized subjects and their relegation to otherness. Years after the struggle for independence the content of what is taught, methods of teaching and research remain Western in non‐Western contexts. This does not only alienate the ‘othered’ from their own knowledge systems, it can be a matter of life and death as demonstrated by the HIV/AIDS information and education campaign. Using excerpts from studies on HIV/AIDS, the paper highlights that interventions to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, legitimized by conventional/Western research knowledge and frameworks, have alienated the people from the struggle to prevent the spread of the virus. Findings from a number of research studies on HIV/AIDS in Botswana are analyzed within the framework of current prevention strategies, more specifically posters and cartoons used in the campaign against HIV/AIDS, to illustrate the marginalization of other knowledge systems and the intersection of the ‘otherness’ ideology with mainstream First World research methodologies.     

‘I don’t want to catch it’. Boys,girls and sexualities in an HIV/AIDS environment

This paper examines young South African school children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children’s discourses of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We show that young children’s meanings of sex, sexuality and are not straightforward and are actively produced and defined through a range of social processes. These processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure. Young children’s meanings of HIV/AIDS are explored in the second part of the paper. Here we show how their knowledge of HIV/AIDS is socially structured through class/race and gender and these forms of social relations provide the framing and reference points for children’s constructions of meanings around HIV/AIDS. We finish the paper by raising some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of what we have found for HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.     

University teaching and social cohesion in the age of AIDS: A South African case study

In the context of ongoing social divisions, lack of coherent leadership by government, and even divisiveness over medical advances and public health mandates, how might universities respond? What university actions can support social cohesion in a society splintered by class, race, gender, colonial legacies, the history of apartheid, and HIV/AIDS? More specifically, what approaches to university teaching of HIV/AIDS might foster social cohesion? During 2006, I interviewed 22 instructors at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) at three campuses. The interviewees were faculty members in education, sociology, history, psychology, theology, gender studies, and theater. I observed numerous classes that focused on HIV/AIDS and interviewed approximately 40 undergraduate, honours (4th year), and graduate students. I found that the curriculum and teaching went beyond the technical, individualistic, rational, self-interested assumptions and approaches (such as how to distribute information and condoms) typical of much safe-sex education. The courses explicitly critiqued assumptions, beliefs, and stereotypes that contribute to social divisions and stigma. The teaching efforts consciously included cultural understandings, specifically Zulu cultural understandings of health, community responses, and individuals within communal relationships. The approaches explicitly connected HIV/AIDS with social divisions and inequities of power. The teaching promoted an awareness that public health initiatives (and church or counseling responses) are fraught and controversial. Thus, the teaching tried to place its own ideas within history and society, offering a post-colonial/critical understanding of knowledge, theories, and social “solutions.” In foregrounding social divisions in relation to AIDS, these programmes promoted a critical-edged social cohesion.