The labyrinth of HIV and AIDS education and teaching
3.4 HIV and AIDS education: a window of hope
3.4.4 Addressing the challenges faced by teachers in their HIV and AIDS teaching
The need for teachers to address HIV and AIDS education and the promise this offers remains imperative. Parents often lack HIV-related knowledge and skills or feel uncomfortable discussing sensitive, sexuality issues with their children (Boler et al., 2003;
Clarke, 2008). This huge responsibility, therefore, is left for teachers to shoulder (Visser, 2004). Teachers, however, have not been adequately trained and prepared for their roles related to teaching in an HIV and AIDS context. Teachers’ capacity and effectiveness in performing this role have, nevertheless, come under scrutiny (Baxen, 2010; Clarke, 2008;
Kelly, 2002c). Serious concerns include: Why are teachers achieving inadequate success in
108
this role? What challenges do teachers confront when teaching about HIV and AIDS? How do these challenges influence teachers’ effectiveness in delivering HIV and AIDS messages?
How can teachers be supported in this role? Are teachers suitable role models to deliver HIV- prevention messages?
Evidence reveals that challenges facing teachers related to their HIV and AIDS teaching are numerous (Clarke, 2008; Kelly, 2000; 2002a; Visser, 2004). The knowledge, attitudes and values of teachers have increasingly been questioned. While some studies, as mentioned earlier, (Peltzer, 2003; Visser, 2004) suggest that teachers have sufficient knowledge about the biomedical aspect of HIV and AIDS; in contrast, others report that teachers have inadequate knowledge and skills to teach about the topic (Kelly 2002a; 2000; McGinty &
Mundy, 2009). This being so means that, predominantly, lessons about HIV and AIDS focus on scientific facts about structure and transmission of HIV, its effects on the body and how to prevent HIV-infection. The reason for this, according to Wood and Hillman (2008) and Kelly (2002a), is that teachers lack confidence since they have not been adequately trained to address the psycho-social and cultural dimensions about HIV and AIDS. Indeed, it is against this realisation that Kelly (2002a) asserts that teachers should not be solely tasked with conveying HIV and AIDS information and developing appropriate values and attitudes.
Social and cultural constraints perpetuate the silence, stigma and discrimination, associated with HIV and AIDS, and present significant challenges for teachers (Boler et al., 2003;
Breidlid, 2009; Kelly, 2002a; Visser, 2004; Wood, 2008b). As such, topics related to sexuality, sexual intercourse and condom use are considered taboo. Teachers, thus, experience great difficulty addressing cultural sexual practices, such as multiple sexual partners, power and gender inequalities and relationships with older men for financial gain, (Boler et al., 2003; Breidlid, 2009). In the same vein, Wood (2008b) contends that social and cultural norms govern social labels or stigmas, which reduce a person’s self-esteem and self- value or how he or she is perceived or valued by others. As a result of such stigmas, teachers experience: “reduced productivity and motivation, rejection by colleagues, increased absenteeism, avoidance of testing and subsequent treatment, reduced efforts to seek care and support, or withdrawal, depression and burnout and shame, suffering and silence and reduced self-esteem” (Wood, 2008b, p. 187).
109
School cultures are diverse and fluid, comprising many facets such as cultural symbols and practices, values and beliefs which are significantly influenced by the community. Teachers, for Shaeffer (1994), are either formally or informally managed or influenced by such school cultures and surrounding communities. Consequently, they are obliged to be more culturally sensitive to their surrounding communities, and are, therefore, hesitant to teach about sex and sexuality as this contradicts community norms and values. Related to this, Adonis (2009) argues that school cultures and teachers’ personal identities influence their professional identities, pedagogical practices and knowledge taught about HIV and AIDS. As such, school cultures regulate the HIV and AIDS terminology and knowledge that teachers utilise, resulting in them overlooking or excluding sexual information since they are “silenced due to fear” to challenge the dominant school and community cultures (Adonis, 2009, p. 44). Poor psychological and emotional skills exacerbate the challenges teachers face with regard to HIV and AIDS (Wood & Hillman, 2008; Kelly, 2002a).
The corollary of such social and cultural constraints is that teachers practice ‘selective teaching’: entire lessons on HIV and AIDS are omitted; HIV and AIDS are taught without any direct reference to sex or human relations; or selective messages are given on suitable sexual behaviour (Boler et al., 2003, p. 45; Kelly, 2002a). In other words, teachers refrain from discussing sensitive, sexually explicit material and discuss HIV-transmission without directly talking about sexual intercourse, safe sex or abstinence due to societal, cultural and religious pressures. Teachers engage in ‘selective teaching’ for various reasons: lack of knowledge, training and confidence, gender issues, low priority to these lessons in the curriculum, lack of resources and support and poor salaries and school conditions of teachers (Boler et al., 2003, p. 32). However, evidence of the relationship between cultural context or beliefs and the efficiency of the HIV intervention programmes is, nevertheless, scarce.
Social contexts and settings of gender inequalities and poverty add to the challenging role of teaching about HIV and AIDS effectively (Campbell & Foulis, 2002; Campbell et al., 2005).
As such, teachers do not work in a vacuum since their personal and professional identities and teaching practice are influenced by their communities and social contexts. While teachers have to deal with obstacles of stigma and poor stakeholder partnerships, these are exacerbated by social contexts of unemployment, crime and poverty. A huge challenge for teachers,
110
therefore, is to create supportive and safe contexts to address HIV and AIDS, and overcome such challenges.
There is also the challenge facing teachers with regard to curriculum integration (Kelly 2002b; 2002c; van Laren & Ismail-Allie, 2008). Even though policy documents suggest that HIV and AIDS should be integrated into the curriculum, follow up by principals and education department officials to ensure such curriculum integration, is, indeed, lacking.
Teachers are nevertheless left to face this challenge on their own and embrace it with differing levels of success (see Gachuhi, 1999). While it is recommended that HIV and AIDS education be included as a stand-alone in subjects such as Life Skills and Life Orientation, this is not always the case given challenges of timetabling, perceived importance of HIV and AIDS by school leadership and diverse social-cultural contexts.
The upshot is the need for teacher training programmes and departments of education to acknowledge and support teachers to cope with such challenges. Of particular importance is the urgent need to develop the counselling skills of teachers and equip them to offer psychological and emotional support to those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS (Kelly, 2002a ; Wood & Hillman, 2008). I believe that the silence, stigma and discrimination related to HIV and AIDS present serious obstacles and that breaking this silence is crucial for teachers in their efforts to curb the pandemic. In accordance, Kofi Annan delineates:
HIV is not a death sentence. But silence about HIV and AIDS can be one.
So let us speak up about HIV and AIDS. It is a priority for the whole UN family- not only in our work, but in our lives.
(Kofi Annan, UNAIDS, 2004)
It is clear from this discussion that teachers face numerous challenges in relation to the demanding role of teaching about HIV and AIDS. I contend that research exploring such challenges, and how to support teachers in addressing them, is imperative if they are to overcome these critical obstacles. How, precisely, have education departments and teachers responded to teaching about HIV and AIDS, despite such challenges? This will be explored in the following section.
111