- Title
- Female teachers teaching sexuality education in the HIV and AIDS curriculum in Zimbabwean urban secondary schools
- Creator
- Gudyanga, Ephias
- Subject
- Sex instruction for youth -- Zimbabwe
- Subject
- Women in education -- Zimbabwe AIDS (Disease) -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- Zimbabwe Sex instruction for children -- Zimbabwe
- Date Issued
- 2017
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- DEd
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/15104
- Identifier
- vital:28124
- Description
- This study is focussed on female teachers teaching sexuality education in the HIV and AIDS curriculum in Zimbabwean urban secondary schools. In spite of the importance of education and HIV and AIDS education in preventing HIV infections, Zimbabwe secondary school Guidance and Counseling teachers are not engaging optimally with the current Guidance and Counseling, HIV and AIDS & Life Skills education curriculum, and hence, they are not serving the needs of the learners in the context of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. This study, therefore, explored the following research question with its set of secondary research questions: How can Guidance and Counseling teachers be enabled to teach sexuality education within the HIV and AIDS education curriculum suitable for the Zimbabwe secondary school context? What are Guidance and Counseling teachers’ understandings and interpretations of the current HIV and AIDS education curriculum in Zimbabwe secondary schools? What are Guidance and Counseling teachers’ values and beliefs that underpin their approach to teaching sexuality education within the HIV and AIDS education curriculum in Zimbabwe secondary schools? What do Guidance and Counseling teachers experience as challenges to teaching the necessary critical content in sexuality education within the HIV and AIDS education curriculum? How can Guidance and Counseling teachers be enabled to overcome the challenges they experience and teach the necessary critical content in sexuality education in the HIV and AIDS education curriculum? Eight female Guidance and Counseling urban secondary school teachers, conveniently and purposively selected from Gweru district in Zimbabwe, comprised the sample of participants. Situated within a qualitative research design, and informed by a critical paradigm, I used participatory visual methodology, with drawing and focus group discussion as methods for data generation. Participatory and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data which was theoretically framed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory, as a lens through which I explained the meaning of my findings. The findings, in four themes, revealed that the Guidance and Counseling teachers have an understanding of the Guidance and Counseling curriculum and made their voices heard on how it was designed but also how it should be designed, with whose input it should be designed and why, and how teachers should be supported in implementing it and ensuring that it is appropriate to the context in which they teach. The Guidance and Counseling teachers reflected on and reconsidered their own values and beliefs in relation to the values underpinning the sexuality education within the HIV and AIDS curriculum in order to fulfil their professional role in the context of the HIV epidemic. Even though the Guidance and Counseling female teachers were enthusiastic to teach sexuality education - in the age of HIV and AIDS - in the particular school and community context, they found themselves in an educational system that did not seem to support their work in an optimal way, and in a community with diverse cultures, cultural practices and beliefs of which some seemed to contradict what was supposed to be taught in the curriculum. The participatory visual methodology, however, enabled a process in which the Guidance and Counseling female teachers could reflect on themselves, the context in which they taught, their sexuality education work and also learn from each other. In this way their agency seemed to have been enabled to address the challenges and consider how they could teach sexuality education in their secondary schools in Zimbabwe. The findings have several implications for policy in terms of the Guidance and Counseling curriculum, resource mobilization, pedagogy, engaging with cultural issues, and supporting vulnerable children; and for practice in terms of teacher professional development, teacher training, and for stakeholder contribution. I therefore argue, drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, that the Guidance and Counseling teachers could be enabled to teach sexuality education if the three Activity Systems, namely the Guidance and Counseling teachers, the school system, and the community, work together as one Activity System, engaging with each other in a generative way focused on the same outcome. The Guidance and Counseling teachers could therefore transform their realities if they are enabled to see how their teaching of sexuality education in school is linked to the context of the school and the culture of the community in which they teach and live, and engage with each other to achieve the same objective, namely teaching sexuality education in secondary schools in Zimbabwe, and in so doing enable the learners to make informed choices in the context of HIV and AIDS.
- Format
- xxiii, 262 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Education
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
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