“Squeezed oranges?”: Xhosa secondary school female teachers in township schools remember their learning about sexuality to reimagine their teaching sexuality education

Several concurrent and complex issues seem to influence the teaching of sexuality education in South African schools. Studies have shown that teachers believe they can teach the subject as they have the content knowledge of sexuality education, but experience discomfort when they actually begin the task. We were therefore interested in understanding their perspectives on their own learning about sexuality within their Xhosa culture. Working with 9 purposively selected female Xhosa teachers from 4 secondary schools in townships in Port Elizabeth, we used participatory visual methodology, located within a critical paradigm, generating data with them through drawing. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show that the women teachers largely learnt about sexuality through piecing together the ‘puzzle’ of limited information from various quarters; through strict rules and fear; through own mistakes and through shame. This remembering facilitated ideas to rethink and reimagine sexuality education, drawing the value-laden Xhosa cultural teachings about sexuality into contemporary sexuality education. The participatory visual research process enabled a deep and open engagement, and in more than one way the claiming back of power, demonstrating a way to engage today’s Xhosa adolescents on matters of sexuali

‘We are never invited’: School children using collage to envision care and support in rural schools

The voices of school children who are orphaned and vulnerable are more often than not missing from conversations about their care and support at school. In a rural ecology this is even more so the case. This article draws on a study with school children in rural KwaZulu-Natal and explores their constructions of care and support in the age of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). A qualitative approach using collage, a visual arts-based method was used with 20 school children from two rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa to co-produce data with the participants, which was analysed using thematic analysis. A bio-ecological systems theory was used to frame how rural school children understand and envision care and support in a rural school context, explaining their ideas of transforming school care and support provided for  vulnerable children. The findings point to the need for strengthened competencies and agency, improved collaboration and inclusion at school level, and enhanced relations and agency at community level. The findings suggest a democratising of care and support, and have implications for systemic pro-grammatic interventions and policy-making aimed at strengthening the relationships of the individual, the school and the community.Keywords: care and support provision; collage; HIV and AIDS; intervention; rural school; school children; visual arts-based researc

Critical perspectives on digital spaces in educational research

From text: Globally, the digital is encroaching, reformulating, and recreating spaces in contemporary society (Kalantzis-Cope & Gherab-Martin, 2010). This is so in South Africa with the various applications of the digital having their roots in different places and spaces. Historically, we can look back to the development of portable video technology in the late 1960s in Canada. Organised through the National Film Board of Canada, a group of filmmakers initiated a new approach to documentary film production, engaging communities themselves in the process of filmmaking (Rusted, 2010)

Seeing how it works: A visual essay about critical and transformative research in education

As visual researchers in the field of education we have initiated and completed numerous participatory projects using qualitative visual methods such as drawing, collage, photovoice, and participatory video, along with organising screenings and creating exhibitions, action briefs, and policy posters. Locating this work within a critical paradigm, we have used these methods with participants to explore issues relating to HIV and AIDS and to gender-based violence in rural contexts. With technology, social media, and digital communication network connections becoming more accessible, the possibilities of using visual participatory methods in educational research have been extended. However, the value of visual participatory research in contributing to social change is often unrecognised. While the power of numbers and words in persuasive and informative change is well accepted within the community of educational researchers, the power of the visual itself is often overlooked. In this visual essay, we use the visual as a way to shift thinking about what it means to do educational research that is transformative in and of itself. As an example we draw on our visual participatory work with 15 first-year women university students in the Girls Leading Change1 project to explore and address sexual violence at a South African university. We aim to illustrate, literally, the possibilities of using the visual, not only as a mode of inquiry, but also of representation and communication in education and social science scholarship

High school teachers' experiences of dealing with learners made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS

The HIV and AIDS pandemic have become not only a health concern but educational and social concern as well. According to Beyers and Hay (2011, p. 99) many school-going children are not only affected by HIV but a large number of adolescents are also either HIV positive or have AIDS. Other researchers argue that education should act as a vaccine against new HIV infections (Kendall and O’Gara, 2007, p. 6). This argument comes with the expectation that all teachers are willing and ready to work with learners made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS; without considering the lived realities of the teachers in relation to HIV and AIDS. While many teachers make a difference in the lives of affected and infected learners through the way in which they deal with the learners concerned, some may not take up the challenge to assist the learners, while others might unknowingly and unintentionally do harm. This study, therefore, aimed at exploring high school teachers’ experiences of working with learners made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS in order to generate guidelines to assist teachers to effectively deal with vulnerable learners in their classrooms

Critical perspectives on digital spaces in educational research

From text: Globally, the digital is encroaching, reformulating, and recreating spaces in contemporary society (Kalantzis-Cope & Gherab-Martin, 2010). This is so in South Africa with the various applications of the digital having their roots in different places and spaces. Historically, we can look back to the development of portable video technology in the late 1960s in Canada. Organised through the National Film Board of Canada, a group of filmmakers initiated a new approach to documentary film production, engaging communities themselves in the process of filmmaking (Rusted, 2010)

Seeing how it works: A visual essay about critical and transformative research in education

As visual researchers in the field of education we have initiated and completed numerous participatory projects using qualitative visual methods such as drawing, collage, photovoice, and participatory video, along with organising screenings and creating exhibitions, action briefs, and policy posters. Locating this work within a critical paradigm, we have used these methods with participants to explore issues relating to HIV and AIDS and to gender-based violence in rural contexts. With technology, social media, and digital communication network connections becoming more accessible, the possibilities of using visual participatory methods in educational research have been extended. However, the value of visual participatory research in contributing to social change is often unrecognised. While the power of numbers and words in persuasive and informative change is well accepted within the community of educational researchers, the power of the visual itself is often overlooked. In this visual essay, we use the visual as a way to shift thinking about what it means to do educational research that is transformative in and of itself. As an example we draw on our visual participatory work with 15 first-year women university students in the Girls Leading Change1 project to explore and address sexual violence at a South African university. We aim to illustrate, literally, the possibilities of using the visual, not only as a mode of inquiry, but also of representation and communication in education and social science scholarship

‘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

Networks for change and well-being - girl-led ‘from the ground up’ policy making to address sexual violence in Canada and South Africa

The report traces six years of Networks for Change project activities, outputs, and outcomes. Researchers use a participatory visual methodology (PVM) approach which involves the use of participatory arts-based methods such as cellphilm-making, collage, digital story-telling, drawing and photovoice to generate data and stimulate social and policy change. The use of visual story telling can help facilitate discussions about sensitive topics such as sexual violence. Young women in rural communities are particularly marginalised due to factors such as gender, age, poverty, geographic isolation and traditional norms, values and “so-called cultural practices.

The HIV and AIDS academic curriculum in Higher Education

While a university’s core business of teaching, research and engagement is underpinned by national and global imperatives, the purpose of the university is embedded in its students’ realities of living, learning and working in the world. A key challenge for all academics, therefore, is to keep their academic project, whether in engineering or health sciences, ‘embedded in the students’, while at the same time, preparing them for work in the world. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the university academic curriculum should be harnessed more vigorously to address HIV and AIDS – a reality impacting the student corps. This is achieved by pointing to higher education policy on integrating HIV and AIDS into the academic curriculum; by showing how ‘champions’ across various disciplines in the higher education sector are already integrating HIV and AIDS in the curriculum; by drawing on a pilot study in the education sector to raise possibilities for integration; and finally, by positing some provocative propositions towards a more intensive integration of HIV and AIDS into the higher education academic curriculum. This paper, therefore, seeks to persuade, but also to ensure, that the work of the higher education institution remains ‘embedded in its students’, and that the curriculum is responsive and engaged, and contributes to the public good of South African society as a whole