Self-instructional Materials on HIV/AIDS for Teacher Education Programmes

The HEAIDS programme of Higher Education South Africa (HESA) (formerly SAUVCA) commissioned SAIDE a year ago to develop a set of materials to support the outcomes for a core module on HIV/AIDS for professional teacher education programmes in South Africa prepared by the HEAIDS teacher education task team. Tessa Welch provides details on the module.

A core module on HIV/AIDS is required in all pre- and in-service professional teacher education qualifications up to NQF Level 6. It specifies the minimum competences to be achieved by all qualifying educators across all phases of schooling and all learning areas.

The materials SAIDE has prepared consist of a Learning Guide and a Reader.

The Learning Guide has four units, each representing 12 to 20 hours of study, designed around four questions:

•  What do we need to know about HIV and AIDS?

Unit One deals with the basic biological and medical facts about HIV and AIDS, and how to select and mediate these facts for different learners.

•  Why are HIV and AIDS part of our lives?

Unit Two is about the socio-economic aspects of HIV and AIDS – why it is most prevalent in Southern Africa , gender issues in the spread of HIV and AIDS, stigma and discrimination.

•  What are HIV and AIDS doing to us in our school communities?

Unit Three covers the impact of HIV and AIDS on the teaching profession, on individual teachers, and on learners.

•  What can we do about HIV and AIDS in our classrooms and school communities?

This is the most practical of the units and provides teachers with guidance on providing emotional support for learners, organising practice care for vulnerable learners, and educating the school community about HIV and AIDS.

Throughout, the material is related to the school and classroom, and the key activities in each unit require school-related work.

The Learning Guide and the Reader work together – in each unit there is reference to more than one Reading , usually with an activity to guide student engagement with the Reading . However, the Reader can also be used independently – see the Contents page.

The Learning Guide is designed for independent learning (self-instruction)as the introduction explains:

The learning approach in this module follows a learning cycle in which activities are central. You probably know quite a lot already about HIV and AIDS, and we would like to build on that knowledge through activities that ask you to think about what you know in a different way, or do a task that gives you an experience that you have not yet had. But, in order to learn from an activity, you need to think about what you have learned. So we try to help with that process by discussing or commenting on the activity. If you are using the materials in a contact session, then conversation with your lecturers and your classmates will help as well. But as you explore further, you not only learn new things, you also have more questions, and it is these questions that frame the next activity. The cycle (or, if you like, the spiral) is repeated:

Finally, at the end of a number of cycles, the end of the unit is reached – by which time you will have had a chance to achieve the outcomes set at the outset of the unit.

Each unit has a key assessment task that will help you to draw together the learning through all the activities in the unit. Your lecturer may or may not decide to use this key assessment task for formal assessment purposes.

The materials will be piloted as part of UNISA's NPDE programme in 2006.

Other institutions who may wish to pilot the materials are welcome to contact the HEAIDS programme director at HESA:

P O Box 27392
Sunnyside
Pretoria 0132
South Africa

admin@hesa.org.za