In response to the crisis created by the HIV and AIDS pandemic in this country, South African education departments are demanding that educators play a significant role in creating awareness amongst children and adults alike. This task is challenging for teachers who are already working under the pressure of demanding workloads. In order to achieve the intended outcome of AIDS awareness, training of highly efficacious teachers is required. The education module, PSED201, Issues in School and Society, offered as part of a BEd degree for in-service mathematics and science teachers at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, provides one such training opportunity. This study investigates the impact of this module on the self-efficacy of 128 teachers with respect to their role as HIV and AIDS educators. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used and data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. The results suggest that there has been an improvement in all four areas of teacher self-efficacy examined in this research. As such, it may be concluded that an important outcome of this intervention has been achieved. As highly efficacious teachers are more likely to influence the behaviour of their learners, the findings of this research should make a meaningful contribution to the debate around AIDS education in South African schools.

The focus of this study was to assess the level of knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and to examine the sexual attitudes and behaviour of adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities. The sample was obtained from a secondary school in Chatsworth that caters for learners with learning difficulties/disabilities. The study used quantitative methods of data collection . Sixty adolescents with learning disabilities completed questionnaires. The findings indicate that adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities have good knowledge of HIV/AIDS and subsequently the majority is not engaging in sexual activity. The findings can be used to inform future research on adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities, as well as to inform future intervention strategies. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

Social workers are faced with the huge challenge of HIV and AIDS. The increasing number of HIV infected people requires professional intervention. The National Integrated Plan is currently the strategy that social workers apply in service delivery. It offers a range of services such as soup kitchens, food parcels, homework supervision, administration of anti-retroviral drugs and foster care placement to children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. The bulk of the work facing social workers includes orphans, infected and affected children and child headed households. HIV and AIDS affect the education system in the sense that school going children are infected and affected by AIDS. The life-skills HIV/AIDS programme offered in schools is the strategy that the education system can effectively use to deal with the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Lifeskills HIV/AIDS programme offers educators, children and parents the opportunity to learn about preventative measures, factors that contribute to HIV/AIDS and childhood development. Primary caregivers need to learn about basic facts of HIV/AIDS. This study was a qualitative descriptive study to understand the views of primary caregivers on life - skills HIV/AIDS offered in school. The conceptual framework, which underpinned the study, was the eco-systems approach. The data was collected via in depth interviews with 10 respondents where an interview guide questions was used. The interview sessions were tape-recorded and transcribed. The outcomes of the study revealed that most primary caregivers were of the idea that their children should be taught life-skills HIV/AIDS in schools. The primary caregivers felt that this programme would assist them in understanding numerous behaviours that their children exhibit that predispose them to HIV infections. The findings of this study are tentative in view of the limitations identified in the study. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

This study identifies differing interests which have impacted how Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention programmes in Vancouver have evolved. Drawing largely upon the writings of Michel Foucault with respect to power, knowledge and sexuality, discursive trends in materials are identified, categorized and compared to consider how pertinent subjugated knowledges have developed. The interplay between knowledge-regimes (the benedicted) and subjugated knowledges (the interdicted) are explicated through textual analyses of the materials collected. The findings suggest that knowledges cultivated within the male homosexual communities of Vancouver ensured the implementation of prevention programmes contextually relevant to their own milieu. These strategies were also integrated into broader prevention initiatives designed for society in-general, once their efficacy was apparent. Implications for community education and public health education are discussed, and areas for future research are identified.

HIV/AIDS has probably become the most dreadful of all diseases, as no other disease has managed to threaten civilization as HIV/AIDS. It is capable of destroying large sections of humanity (Schoub, 1999). South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, while KwaZulu-Natal is the worst affected province in this country (Kaufmann, 2004). There is a high incidence of HIV infection that is reported in younger people between the ages of 15 to 29 years, which suggests that many were infected in their teens. These statistics underline the central position that young people play in South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mandela (2005)2 states that in confronting the severe threat of HIV/AIDS, fellow South Africans have to jointly take responsibility to save this nation. The experiences in other countries have taught us that HIV infection can be prevented by investing in information and lifeskills development for the youth. This study focuses on the implementation of the National HIV/AIDS policy and HIV/AIDS and Lifeskills intervention programme at a public primary school in the South Durban region in KwaZulu-Natal. It examines: • The perceptions of the Life Orientation (LO) educators towards the HIV/AIDS policy and intervention programme. • The impact that the intervention programme has had on learner awareness and knowledge of the epidemic. The population consisted of 5 Life Orientation educators and 30 grade 7 learners. Information and data was gathered by qualitative methods viz: the use of semi-structured and focus group interviews. Some of the findings that emerged from the study suggest that: • The National HIV/AIDS policy and intervention programme is being implemented at the school. • The LO educators have a good knowledge and understanding of the contents of the National HIV/AIDS policy. However, training is lacking in the teaching of HIV/AIDS education. • The learners have a fairly sound knowledge about how the virus is transmitted and how it can be prevented. • Learners also have a positive attitude towards those with HIV/AIDS with regards to acceptance, providing assistance, showing them love, and respect and by being supportive. An important challenge faced by the school is to ensure that learners continue to receive salient information and knowledge about the epidemic and that educator's get the necessary training especially with counselling of learners who are infected and affected by the virus. This will help to enhance the quality of the teaching of HIV/AIDS and Life Skills education during the Life Orientation learning area. 2.President Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected Black president of South Africa, cited in the Foreword, in Abdool Karim and Abdool Karim (2005). / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This study is situated within a poststructuralist paradigm and uses qualitative methods to examine how teachers map and make sense of intersecting barriers to basic education embedded in their specific schooling contexts and communities, in particular, in a context in which HIV/AIDS prevalence is high. The study examines how teacher constructions of their experiences of teaching in a particular context shape their taken for granted understandings of the intersecting barriers to basic education. In other words, it explored how teachers position themselves within historically constructed discourses about their learners and the community in which they teach, and how these shape their understandings of barriers to basic education. The participants were thirty-six teachers (ten males and twenty six females) from five schools in the Richmond Municipality. Focus group interviews were used to access participants understanding and experiences' of barriers to schooling in the context of HIV and AIDS. Within the focus group sessions, participatory techniques were used as a means of drawing out sensitive information from participants, namely, a ranking exercise and the vulnerability matrix. The findings in the study suggest that the teachers relied on a deficiency framework as a basis for understanding the intersecting barriers to basic education in an HIV and AIDS context. Five key themes relating to this framework emerged: a discourse of detachment; silences; difference as deficit; normalisation discourse; and a discourse of caring. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Currently in South Africa much emphasis is being placed on minimizing barriers to learning and maximizing participation to learning. Education White Paper 6 of 2001 draws attention to the barriers to learning in South Africa and highlights HIV/AIDS as one of the barriers to learning. This study, therefore, seeks to ascertain what barriers to learning impact on the lives of children affected by HIV/AIDS and what support exists for children affected by HIV/AIDS. Further, this study is part of a larger project commissioned by the NRF on the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on learning in the Richmond District. A participatory research framework was employed in this study using qualitative methods of gathering data. A structured participant interview schedule was devised using projective and drawing exercises to get participants to volunteer information. Six children from a Day Care and Support Centre in Richmond were selected purposefully as research participants. Three focus group sessions were held to gather the data from the participants. The data that was gathered was subjected to stringent content analysis from which topics and categories emerged which were used to report on the data. The data was analysed using critical theory in general and Young's theory of oppression in particular. The findings of this study confirm that poverty, issues pertaining to family responsibility, the emotional trauma of losing loved ones and the crime, violence and abuse that affected children are exposed to, all serve as barriers to learning. Further, the findings indicate that children are aware of the agencies from which assistance could be accessed. However, the financial assistance in terms of child support grants is not being fully exploited by those who qualify for it. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

This study identifies differing interests which have impacted how Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention programmes in Vancouver have evolved. Drawing largely upon the writings of Michel Foucault with respect to power, knowledge and sexuality, discursive trends in materials are identified, categorized and compared to consider how pertinent subjugated knowledges have developed. The interplay between knowledge-regimes (the benedicted) and subjugated knowledges (the interdicted) are explicated through textual analyses of the materials collected. The findings suggest that knowledges cultivated within the male homosexual communities of Vancouver ensured the implementation of prevention programmes contextually relevant to their own milieu. These strategies were also integrated into broader prevention initiatives designed for society in-general, once their efficacy was apparent. Implications for community education and public health education are discussed, and areas for future research are identified. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

HIV/AIDS Education in Butare- Ville Secondary Schools (Rwanda): Analyzing current Pedagogic Discourse using a Bernsteinian framework. This thesis is concerned with the questions of "the what and how of HIV/AIDS school education". This study is located in three secondary schools in Butare-Ville, Rwanda, which were selected to show the picture of current pedagogic practices of fighting the pandemic in various schools. The first part of the study is concerned with the analysis of National policy of HIV/AIDS education of grade 9. This analysis examines how HIV/AIDS education is planned and integrated in various school subjects and what the Ministry of Education's policy is on how it should be implemented. I examined the instructional and regulative discourses within the national policy. Through curricula of other subjects which integrate into HIV/ AIDS education, I also examined how the knowledge of instruction is organized in terms of vertical and horizontal organization. The second part of the study is concerned with how the National HIV/AIDS Policy of HIV/AIDS education is transmitted in the classrooms in terms of classification and framing. In consideration of how students are educated about the disease, I explored students' grouping in terms of gender for getting knowledge and life skills to protect themselves from the pandemic. The theoretical resources for the analysis are drawn from Bernstein. The contribution of this thesis is two-fold. Firstly, it offers methodological techniques for evaluating of HIV/AIDS discourse with regard to how it is constructed and distributed in the classroom using a Bernsteinian framework. Secondly, the thesis points forward to further research in HIV/AIDS education for change in curriculum and pedagogic practices. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This thesis is concerned with an evaluation of AIDS education in KwaZulu-Natal schools. Although HIV and AIDS affect all segments of the population and all age groups, prevention efforts aimed at the youth may be the most effective. HIV/AIDS is a disease most prevalent in the fifteen to thirty-five age group, and if we can decrease rates of transmission in people under twenty, we will save much money, pain and suffering in the next ten years. It is often seen as prudent to save young generations, rather than older ones, and this may be especially true in the case of HIV/AIDS, where HIV/AIDS in the younger, reproductive age groups leads to the very youngest group, that it, babies, being born HIV-positive. In addition, the younger generation may be more easy to save: they have not yet formed unsafe sexual practices, and educating them before they develop habits is easier than changing habits of the older generation. I assessed various education departments' AIDS education programmes, based on the criteria of how well pupils are assisted in changing their unsafe sexual practices, or, if they are not yet sexually active, their attitudes towards sex, and on what type of message and ideal is presented about sexuality and sexual activity. Judged by my framework, I found the existent programmes to be lacking. But this act of assessment allowed for a more thorough evaluation of AIDS education in the region to emerge, and from this, recommendations for AIDS prevention programmes to be developed: AIDS education must occur in the context of more general skills development, skills in negotiating sexuality and sexual relationships, and skills for the negotiation of life in the late twentieth century. Innovative developments in the region, regarding AIDS and sexuality education teacher training, and the development of minimum criteria by which to set up and judge programmes, could be used as the basis for a sound AIDS education programme. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.