Using HIV&AIDS statistics in pre-service Mathematics Education to integrate HIV&AIDS education

In South Africa, the HIV&AIDS education policy documents indicate opportunities for integration across disciplines/subjects. There are different interpretations of integration/inclusion and mainstreaming HIV&AIDS education, and numerous levels of integration. Integration ensures that learners experience the disciplines/subjects as being linked and related, and integration is required to support and expand the learners’ opportunities to attain skills, acquire knowledge and develop attitudes and values across the curriculum. This study makes use of self-study methodology where I, a teacher educator, aim to improve my practice through including HIV&AIDS statistics in Mathematics Education. This article focuses on how I used HIV&AIDS statistics to facilitate pre-service teacher reflection and introduce them to integration of HIV&AIDS education across the curriculum. After pre-service teachers were provided with HIV statistics, they drew a pie chart which graphically illustrated the situation and reflected on issues relating to HIV&AIDS. Three themes emerged from the analysis of their reflections. The themes relate to the need for further HIV&AIDS education, the changing pastoral role of teachers and the changing context of teaching. This information indicates that the use of statistics is an appropriate means of initiating the integration of HIV&AIDS education into the academic curriculum.Keywords: integration, HIV&AIDS education, statistics, pre-service teachers, self-study methodolog

Stretching and transforming research practise for HIV and AIDS curriculum integration: An auto-ethnography

This paper explores stretching and transforming my research expertise in HIV and AIDS curriculum integration. As a mathematics teacher educator in higher education, I actively pursue ways of enhancing and improving production of new knowledge through alternative research strategies. This study focuses on how my involvement in a Higher Education HIV/AIDS Programme (HEAIDS) HIV and AIDS Education Community of Practice in Higher Education Institutions (CoP) contributed to changing my higher education curriculum research to accommodate the HIV and AIDS context in South Africa. My research question is: How has my participation in the HEAIDS CoP contributed to changing my research practice in HIV and AIDS curriculum integration? I explore HEAIDS CoP contributions to my professional research capacity development using auto-ethnographical methods, using a crocheted artefact as a metaphor to understand my research practice development. Key findings point to the complex, folded, twisted, interwoven nature of reflexivity in my professional learning

A case study of Mathematics teaching and learning at a rural school in KwaZulu-Natal.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Abstract available in the PDF.Could not find the advisors second initial name. (de Villiers, Michael D

Starting with ourselves : addressing HIV and AIDS education through integration in a South African pre-service teacher mathematics education curriculum.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.The purpose of this study was to initiate integration of HIV and AIDS curriculum i

Containing HIV and AIDS: Creating a readers’ theatre script for professional learning in higher education

We worked together to create a readers’ theatre script as a vehicle for learning about using everyday objects to open up conversations in a workshop on HIV and AIDS curriculum integration research in higher education. Through creating the script and a series of interconnected dialogue pieces we uncovered experiences and understandings of productive containment and connections in professional learning in higher education, especially in relation to sensitive areas such as HIV and AIDS. We demonstrate how we composed the readers’ theatre script as a creative analytical practice to gain insights into our learning, while also discovering more about how this arts-based research practice can enhance individual and collaborative meaning making. Through arts-based collaborative self-study research we were able to deepen and extend our learning in a supportive and inventive manner, which fuelled hopefulness and a renewed sense of purpose

Scrapbooking as a tool for transdisciplinary professional learning about HIV and AIDS curriculum integration in higher education

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Connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science

As an interdisciplinary team of educational researchers we explored pre-service science teachers’ perspectives on using digital technologies and social media to address socially relevant issues in science teaching. The rationale for teaching socially relevant science was embedded in the concept of renaiscience, thus underscoring the need for science to be perceived as a human activity. We drew on generational theory to consider the educational significance of digital technologies and social media. Two different activities were used to elicit the pre-service science teachers’ perspectives. First, we invited them to reflect on a digital animation that we had produced, and they highlighted the advantages of digital animation as a medium to communicate a socially relevant message more appealingly to the Millennial generation. We then engaged these pre-service teachers in a structured concept-mapping activity to consider how digital technologies and social media might be used to address social challenges in South Africa. They drew our attention to the affordances of digital technologies and social media as a means to facilitate critical thinking, cater for diverse learning styles, and make high-quality scientific knowledge more accessible. They highlighted that teaching socially relevant science using digital resources can be cheap, convenient, collaborative, and creative

‘Breaking out of the cocoon’: academics’ experiences of integrating HIV and AIDS into the curriculum

The South African Higher Education Policy Framework on HIV and AIDS tasks universities to address HIV and AIDS in teaching, research and community engagement. In a global economy, integration in academic disciplines is a cost-effective method, simultaneously allowing for multiple perspectives of engaging with the epidemic. This study uses a qualitative approach to explore the sharing experiences of academics who integrate HIV and AIDS issues into the curriculum. Academics from three South African higher education institutions were interviewed. Three themes emerged from an analysis of their experiences: to share or not to share; how academics view integration in terms of their role as an academic, and who is integrating what. The findings indicate that academics are taking up the challenge, but that they require collegial support

“Imaginative, embodied scholarly assemblages”: A poetic analysis of the Self-Reflexive Methodologies Special Interest Group scholarship

The Self-Reflexive Methodologies Special Interest Group (SIG) of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) has been active since 2014, with over 100 academics from more than 20 higher education institutions participating. The 10th Anniversary SAERA special issue of Journal of Education prompted an analysis of the SIG’s educational scholarship presented in five journal special issues that have served as platforms for SIG research over the years. This study comprises a multilayered poetic analysis, combining pantoum poetry clusters, tanka poems, and a lantern poem. By revisiting and examining the special issues using increasingly concise poetic forms, the study highlights the contributions and variety of local and international scholarship arising from the explorations and conversations of the SIG since its inception. This wide-ranging scholarship addresses challenges in South African education, promotes educational development and justice, advances conceptual and theoretical understanding, and broadens research methodology