Feedback From Student Teachers at Molepolole College of Education on Issues Related to HIV / AIDS Education at CJJS’s and Molepolole College of Education, Including the Use of the Talkback Programme.

A questionnaire was carried out with 176 year two and three students from MCE returning from teaching practice in CJSS’s. All the data used in this report was taken from these replies. There were no observations in schools by the author or further interviews with the students themselves. Therefore all these issues raised would benefit form further follow up in the field.

The majority of CJSS’s are showing the Talkback programme. A significant minority are not.
In those where it is shown most teachers are reported to have access to it although the questionnaire did not explore how many teachers actually watch the programme.
Many student teachers seem to watch the programme when given the opportunity and some make use of it in their teaching.
Videos tend not to be made of the programme and are not readily available to staff or pupils in the schools.
Very little use is made of the programme in MCE (this is true in at least one other of the colleges of education, and probably in all the others).

There is a dearth of basic health and safety awareness at CJSS’s. They also lack basic equipment and resources in this area.

Teaching and learning around HIV / AIDS would seem to be based on fairly traditional methods and resources with some notable exceptions. A lot more use could be made of community based organisations particularly those involving PLWA’s.
There are few resources that are not solely text based. This will cause particular problems for pupils with some disabilities and other special needs.
Considering the fact that female pupils aged 15 - 19 are far more likely to be infected than males there was no specific mention of any interventions / resources aimed particularly at this group.

Most classroom based discussion seems to be around basic causes, spread and prevention of HIV / AIDS infection. Students indicated a need to know more about testing procedures and ARV’s. There seemed to be little indication that hands on ‘life skills’ based teaching approaches were in use.

There was some evidence of unwillingness by some schools and individual teachers to confront the issues, and some of teachers abusing pupils sexually.