Equipping Educators to Address HIV and AIDS: A Review of Selected Teacher Education Initiatives

"While the need to prioritize HIV and AIDS education for teachers is increasingly recognized, much more still needs to be done in terms of equipping teachers to address the epidemic."

This article presents a survey of the spectrum of educational initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa which are designed to equip educators to be informed about, and to manage, HIV and AIDS in their personal and professional lives.

From the Abstract: "Criteria for inclusion in the review are that the HIV and AIDS education endeavours must be operational (already functioning) and experience-based (have been experienced first-hand by the author). The review begins with a reflective account of two major undertakings: (a) an e-learning course for teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa and (b) South Africa's Higher Education HIV/AIDS Programme. Thereafter, the review considers a range of academic pursuits currently involving in-service school teachers and principals studying at a South African university. These include (a) two Advanced Certificates in Education; (b) doctoral studies; and (c) a new short learning programme."

Part I: Teacher education initiatives includes:

• Capacity building for teachers - An InWEnt, Capacity Building International, programme, working in conjunction with the University of Western Cape (UWC), that begins with an intensive introductory course that prepares teacher educators to complete a one-year online course, ‘Teaching and the AIDS Pandemic’, using an interactive blended learning approach to enhance the personal and professional capacity of teacher educators to train future teachers about HIV and AIDS. It includes online modules entitled: The AIDS pandemic in context: gender, culture and identity; Being a good teacher; School case study visits; Developing AIDS curricula for schools; Building responses to AIDS in schools and communities; Developing schools into nodes of care and support for vulnerable children; Developing health-promoting schools; Becoming a truly reflective practitioner - my way forward. "During the InWEnt/UWC course, each participant is required to conduct a detailed field study of a local primary or secondary school. The research findings from these local school case studies feed back into, and enrich, the course as multi-country case studies."
• Higher Education HIV/AIDS Programme (HEAIDS) Teacher Education Pilot Project - HEAIDS has included the development of learning materials to address HIV and AIDS in pre-service and in-service teacher education courses. The course material, 'Being a teacher in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic', has been implemented in 27 teacher education programmes (data from 2009).

Part II: Principals and teachers includes:

• ACE HIV and AIDS for teachers (HAT) module - exposure to reality of HIV and AIDS - is an in-service training for teachers. One module is used in pre-service teacher education: "This 'service learning' module requires them to spend at least 30 hours in placements where they can interact with people living with HIV and AIDS. For the most part, these placements are at non-governmental organizations such as orphanages and AIDS havens, and can also include home visits....The students are required to write reflective journals on their site-based visits and in so doing become acquainted with the challenges of HIV- and AIDS-infected and -affected persons - the grief, despair, stigma and extreme loneliness - as well as their capacity for great courage, resilience and appreciation of respect and care.... As part of their response, the teachers demonstrate specific practical outcomes in their schools where they teach (such as creating food gardens to provide healthy nutrition) and devise ways to provide care and support to their affected learners and parents."
• ACE school leadership and management module - managing HIV and AIDS in schools - is a module in which school principals and senior teachers are required to complete four small research projects: "Conduct an HIV and AIDS risk assessment of your school and community.... Investigate the HIV and AIDS policies of a few other schools and then, in collaboration with colleagues at your school, create ‘An HIV & AIDS policy for our school’.... [D]esign, conduct and report on a simple survey entitled: ‘How the teachers in our school feel about HIV/AIDS. What are their beliefs/worries/fears?’ Make some recommendations for actions to address some of the problems revealed by your findings....Conduct a brief action research cycle to answer the question: How can we ensure that our school is a centre for care and support for learners affected by HIV and AIDS?"
• Doctoral studies - research on teaching/learning and HIV-affected communities, such as action research aimed to enhance the self-esteem of learners in their marginalised communities. 
• Short learning programme (SLP) in HIV and AIDS from UWC and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) includes modules ‘HIV and Me’ and ‘Improving the Teaching of HIV and AIDS’, examining components of HIV and AIDS education and giving the teachers opportunities to apply their new understandings of the epidemic in their own teaching, using interactive teaching strategies.

The survey concludes that experiential and context-specific action-based learning and research into the social and educational aspects of HIV and AIDS can contribute to breaking the silence and reducing stigma while, at the same time, equipping educators to provide care and support for infected and affected learners and colleagues.