Continuous Absenteeism among Teachers Living with HIV/AIDS: Perceptions of School Principals

Abstract

Education is an indispensable tool for total economic emancipation in Africa and elsewhere. Thus, it is a great cause for concern that teachers, who are the main drivers of education, are so strongly affected by HIV/AIDS. A large part of the profound impact of HIV/AIDS is felt in education and threatens the quality of education. The study reported on examined how principals are managing the challenges caused by absenteeism among teachers living with HIV/AIDS. A narrative inquiry design situated in the qualitative research approach was used together with narrative interviews to elicit qualitative data. The study was embedded within the social constructivist paradigm. Transformational leadership and ethics of care formed the theoretical framework of the study. The qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The key findings reveal how principals maintain quality of instructional effectiveness through substituting sick and absent teachers using a relief system. They also support, empower and advise teachers. Principals should be provided with support from the Department of Education (DoE) to replace teachers timeously before teaching and learning are disrupted.     

Does Russia need sex education? The views of stakeholders in three Russian regions

Objective To investigate the attitudes of the main stakeholders towards the introduction of sex education in schools in Russia.

Design Qualitative semi-structured interview study.

Setting Altai Krai, Volgograd Oblast, Moscow, Russian Federation.

Participants One hundred and fifty-three interviews with Intersectoral HIV/AIDS Committee members, government officials responsible for HIV policies and interventions, non-governmental organisation and private-sector representatives.

Main outcome measures Perception of and attitudes towards the introduction of sex education in schools.

Results Ninety-one per cent of stakeholders welcomed the introduction of sex education in schools and emphasised its importance for a child's personal development, public health, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS control, and pregnancy planning. The majority of respondents suggested providing different information for each age and grade. Despite the claimed support of interviewed policy-makers and main HIV stakeholders, there has been no action to introduce sex education. The majority of respondents were of the view that wider positive support through propaganda about health, sex and healthy lifestyle should be gained prior to introducing sex education in schools by addressing the stigma surrounding sexual issues.

Conclusions There was little opposition to the introduction of sex education in Russian schools expressed in our survey, but there are uncertainties regarding curriculum quality, teaching methods and the starting grade of teaching about sex, and there is a need to cover local sensitivities in the territories. These concerns could and should be addressed during curriculum design, development and programme implementation by the federal and local authorities. Wider involvement of educational specialists, peer-adults, health workers, celebrities and religious representatives in discussion of the curriculum could help prevent opposition to its implementation.

Contribution to knowledge Discussion of sex-related topics has been taboo in Russia and there has been little research into opinions on issues related to sex education. The contribution of this research is in gaining theoretical in-depth understanding of the attitudes of the interviewed stakeholders in Russia about the introduction of sex education in schools.     

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.     

Programme implementation in social and emotional learning: basic issues and research findings

Abstract

This paper discusses the fundamental importance of achieving quality implementation when assessing the impact of social and emotional learning interventions. Recent findings in implementation science are reviewed that include a definition of implementation, its relation to programme outcomes, current research on the factors that affect implementation, and a framework for understanding the steps, actions and challenges involved in achieving quality implementation. Examples from the social and emotional learning literature are used to illustrate different issues.     

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.     

Developing Policy for HIV/AIDS in Sport: Separating Fact From Fiction

In recent years, HIV-positive athletes hove increasingly made the headlines. leading to questions and concerns regarding HIV transmission through sport. Based on limited understanding and irrational fear. athletes have been excluded from sport competitions or encouraged to retire prematurely. In other cases. they have been subjected to random, mandatory HIV testing prior to sport competition. Because HIV/AIDS is a medical and social problem, information from health-related sources is included in this analysis, including the modes of HIV transmission. This analysis focuses on further issues related to rights, obligations, risks, privacy, and policy. The growing dilemma for the sport professionals to weigh an athlete's right to privacy against their own duty to warn in the decision-making process is examined, with a discussion on mandatory HIV testing for athletes. Guidelines based on principles of medical ethics are offered to aid sport practitioners in providing all athletes with the best possible service.     

New Challenges in Agricultural Advisory Services from a Research Perspective: A Literature Review,Synthesis and Research Agenda

Abstract

Purpose: Agricultural advisory services are perceived by many actors involved in rural development as a key driver behind innovation processes in agriculture. However, changes in national and global contexts cause dramatic changes in the orientation of advisory services, their organisation and their methods of intervention. This article aims to analyse the major research topics related to agricultural advice.

Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on an extensive review of literature produced over a ten-year period that is accessible through the CAB, ECONLIT and Web of Science citation indexes. Using keywords related to extension and advisory services, we selected published articles according to the relevance of the results provided in relation to advisory services and the quality of the discussion on past or current controversies.

Findings: The results show that the ongoing scientific debates are shaped by the diversity of disciplines, methods, topics and schools of thought. The scientific community largely has focussed on five main themes: (1) the institutional environment of agricultural advisory services; (2) the structures necessary for the operation of an advisory system; (3) the actors providing advisory services and the skills deployed in advisory activities; (4) the approaches, methods, tools and content of advisory activities; and (5) the assessment and impacts of advisory systems.

Practical implications: This literature review is useful for researchers and practitioners to better understand research results in the field of advisory services. It paves the way for future research.

Originality/Value: Although many articles have been written in recent decades on agricultural advisory services, few studies provide an overview of the contributions of, and debates in, the international scientific community.     

Challenges in Meeting HIV/AIDS Counselling Needs in Nigeria

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is recognized globally as the greatest health challenge of the present generation. It is widely acknowledged to be the foremost killer disease in Africa. Since the first Aids case was publicly announced in 1986, the astronomical increase in victims has been a matter of concern. The rates of HIV/AIDS infection indicate that Nigeria currently has the third largest rate of HIV/AIDS patients. The UNAIDS (2008) reported that as at 2007, the population of children and adults with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria was 2.6 million. Due to the fact that there is no cure for the virus, HIV/AIDS, counselling is an important aspect of its management. Counsellors in Nigeria have provided pre- and post-test counselling, preventive education seminars, and referrals to other health professionals. However, counsellors’ efforts have only yielded limited success because of a number of major challenges. This paper examines some of the challenges involved in meeting the HIV/AIDS counselling needs of Nigerians. Specifically, it addresses challenges faced by government, potential clients, and the Counselling Association of Nigeria, as well as challenges associated with existing cultural practices (indigenous counselling practices). It concludes with specific recommendations for various stakeholders.     

Identity and Audience: living with HIV disease

ABSTRACT

Since the start of the AIDS epidemic, perhaps the majority of interventions to prevent HIV transmission, as well as numerous interventions to promote health and well‐being among people living with HTV disease, have assumed a relatively unproblematic relationship between pedagogy, identity and the anticipated outcomes of health promotion intervention. This paper reviews what has been learned from such initiatives in relation to dominant constructions of the epidemic, and argues for the need to take account of a diverse range of subject positions and identities in future interventions for prevention and care. It highlights a number of areas in which those working internationally in the sociology of education can make a more sustained contribution to the analysis of AIDS‐related cultural forms and identities, and to the development of more appropriate forms of pedagogy within health education and health promotion.     

Into the community and not on the shelf: learning to develop a meaningful HIV/AIDS curriculum for multiple communities

This paper describes the process involved in creating a community-based training curriculum designed to build capacity and foster new knowledge in support of HIV/AIDS education. Highlighted are the challenges and triumphs incurred while working with community and academic partners to ensure the production of an adaptable curriculum designed to accommodate diverse teaching and learning styles. The curriculum provides teachers, community leaders and peer educators with knowledge and skills to competently deliver HIV/AIDS information, regardless of previous training in sexual health education. Educators are encouraged to adapt the curriculum according to community/classroom needs. Also highlighted is the need for creating further opportunities that enable teachers, community practitioners and researchers to collaborate around issues that influence learners' lives.     

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.     

Issues and challenges regarding environmental education policy implementation

Abstract

In this article, the authors have chosen to inquire into a topic that has specific relevance to the status and inclusion of environmental education in the curriculum at a stage when the translation of policy into practice stands at the crossroads: the transition of environment as phase organiser to environment as integral to all learning areas. In education praxis, the translation of policy into practice is in the hands of educators and teachers (using the terminology as suggested in this article). The issues and challenges regarding the implementation of environmental education policy as experienced by educators and teachers are identified through examining this phenomenon as portrayed in two case studies where in-service education and training (INSET) in relation to environmental education occurs. This study is one of the first to provide a researched background that identifies issues and challenges that impact on the implementation of environmental policy in formal education contexts.     

Challenges and prospects for improving teacher education and development through the National Policy Framework on Teacher Education and Development

Abstract

This paper examines the prospects for improving teacher education and development in South Africa through the National Policy Framework on Teacher Education and Development (NPFTED). The key elements of the policy framework are critically analysed in terms of their limitations and their potential for improving teacher education and development as a crucial means to improve learner performance. The paper looks at the current realities in teacher education and development, the progress made and opportunities available, the identifiable gaps, and the proposals for closing the gaps. Possibilities and constraints in the current situation, as they are described in the NPFTED, are discussed. These include globalisation, the challenges facing a fledgling nonracial democracy, the legacy of skewed development under apartheid, current social inequalities, conditions in rural schools, declining recruitment trends, large mismatches between the supply and demand of teachers, HIV/AIDS and other diseases among teachers, the limits of the current planning, information and communication systems, and the situation in education faculties in higher education institutions. The paper concludes that the challenges are formidable, but that proper planning and synergisation of objectives and resources by government, higher education institutions, labour unions, the private sector and the public can contribute to significant improvements.     

HIV/AIDS and legal rights: When the educator's rights collide with learners' rights

Abstract

It is commonly held that when one has disclosed one's human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status to an official, the official is bound by principles of confidentiality not to disclose this information to other parties. In this article, I argue that while it is important to maintain confidentiality on the disclosure of HIV, there is a limitation to this confidentiality. The information may be legally passed on to other particular persons under procedures prescribed by law and policy. In this article arguments are drawn from a literature study and an empirical investigation. The empirical investigation was conducted through the medium of an authentic case study, but was constructed hypothetically on a critical incident of HIV/AIDS in the school context. The school governing bodies (SGBs) were asked to respond to the case in terms of the actions they would take should such an event occur in the schools. SGBs of five schools were interviewed. This research clarifies the levels of understanding of HIV/AIDS legislation and policy and the practices likely to arise from such understandings in South African public schools. The findings amplify the distance between policy and practice and the need for vigilance with respect to legal challenges that schools might face without adequate knowledge of, and information on, the pandemic.     

Innovating Towards Sustainable Agriculture: A Greek Case Study

Abstract

Agronomists (scientists and extensionists), despite the emergence of interactive approaches, still have troubles with (the introduction of) innovations, such as sustainable forms of agriculture. This article critically addresses such difficulties based on the evaluation of a project mainly concerning the introduction of Integrated Crop Management in a Greek village. Evaluation brought to light a number of ‘weaknesses’ which led to a rupturing of the project. Among them, despite the ‘triple bottom line’ and ‘interactive innovation’ rhetoric, the top-down and agro-scientific approach that was taken in practice, which resulted in bypassing the multifaceted nature of such projects and in misunderstandings among the parties involved, emerged as crucial. Therefore, prerequisites, in both theoretical and practical terms, of designs for interactive learning/innovation are outlined.     

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.     

What’s in a word? Practices associated with ‘feedforward’ in higher education

Abstract

The term ‘feedforward’ is increasingly employed in higher education, and this paper focuses on the way in which it fits into contemporary debates about feedback and its impact on practitioners. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the practices academics associate with feedforward and the ways in which their intentions and understandings varied. The term resulted in practices being framed as a process and prompted academics to consider the points in the future when students were expected to deploy information and improve. Three future horizons were identified: the ‘within-module’ future horizon dominated, while the challenges of ‘beyond-module’ and ‘beyond-programme’ horizons became apparent. Written comments, guidance, formative assessment and design practices were associated with feedforward, comprising both transmission and student-focused approaches. It is concluded that the modular system restricts longer-term future horizons and sustainable practices, and more must be done to address the divide between theoretical and practitioners’ perspectives.     

Managing Risk and Experiencing Danger: tensions between government AIDS education policy and young women's sexuality

Much of the early panic relating to AIDS has focused on non‐heterosexual sexualities and the identification of high risk groups. It can be argued that fear of the spread of HIV and AIDS into the heterosexual population was the spur for the development of government policy in this area. The protection of the population in general depends on changes in high risk sexual practices, and the part played in these changes by young women has been given scant attention. We argue here that the sexual knowledge and practice of young women are crucial factors in the spread of HIV and AIDS, and that information on these factors is limited and interpreted within a framework of patriarchal ideology which obscures the power relations embedded in sexual relations. These issues are discussed using data from an investigation of young women's sexual beliefs and behaviour (the Women Risk and AIDS Project — WRAP) in relation to government AIDS education campaigns.

     

Innocent Victims, Fighter Cells, and White Uncles: A Discourse Analysis of Children’s Books about AIDS

In this article, we examine a set of 26 children’s books on HIV/AIDS published between 1989–1999 to identify the ways in which these texts construct HIV/AIDS and people living with HIV/AIDS. We explore how this marginalized group is depicted in these books, and how well-meaning teachers may in fact be reproducing dominant discourses about HIV/AIDS in their curricula. In this article we focus, in particular, on how the discourses connected to public health, medicine, and secrecy (as a discourse across many institutions) are filtered to children and take part in constructing their beliefs and assumptions about HIV/AIDS. We illustrate our argument with examples from the books and show why teachers need to know how to analyze texts they select for their curricula so as to read books about HIV/AIDS critically in the classroom. Megan Blumenreich is Assistant Professor of Childhood Education at The City College of New York, City University of New York. Her research interests focus on urban schooling, poststructuralist approaches to qualitative research, and teacher education. She is the coauthor of The Power of Questions: A Guide to Teacher and Student Research (Heineman, 2005). Marjorie Siegel is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include transmediation and multimodality in literacy education, content area literacies, and literacies and technologies. She is the coauthor of Reading Counts: Expanding the role of reading in mathematics classrooms (Teachers College, 2000). M. Himley, “Teaching the rhetoric of AIDS: Blurring the boundaries.”     

Reflexive Practice: The relationship between social research and health promotion in HIV prevention

This article describes the reflexive practice of both health educator and social researcher in the context of gay community responses to the threat of HIV and AIDS. It describes the processes and structures that were put in place in Australia by AIDS Councils and by social researchers to develop effective health promotion campaigns. It also describes the reflexive relationships between these two partners and between each of them and the gay community. A health promotion campaign that arose out of social researchers identifying an HIV-prevention strategy developed by gay men themselves that was subsequently elaborated by health educators and reflected back to the gay community illustrates the critical reflexivity of the partnership. It concludes that the development of such reflexive partnerships between the gay community, health educators and social researchers provides the basis for effective HIV prevention and education.