Exploring and changing Grade 11 learners’ hegemonic narratives about HIV and AIDS using art-based methods
Abstract
HIV and AIDS education in South Africa has been included in Life Orientation (LO) content for
over a decade now. The outcomes mostly focus on prevention education and support for those
who are HIV infected and affected. However, research indicates that learners still hold negative
and simplistic hegemonic narratives about HIV and AIDS which fail to reflect the complex,
intersectional nature of the pandemic. In addition, literature also reveals that HIV education often
does not engage learners, as it does not relate to their lived experiences. The challenge is thus
twofold: first, to use LO teaching strategies that foster self-reflective, critical participation that
make the learning content relevant to participants' lives and enable them to speak about difficult
issues; second, there is a need to disrupt the rigid, simplistic and stigmatised thinking about HIV
among youth so that they begin to understand HIV from an intersectional, socio-structural
perspective rather than a biomedical perspective which puts the blame on the individual or the
disease. The aim of this study was to use art-based methods to explore and change the
hegemonic HIV and AIDS narratives of the Grade 11 learners in my LO class in a traditional KZN
village school.
Informed by a transformative research paradigm, I used an action research design and art-based
methods to enable participants to be actively involved in changing their negative frames of
reference to more inclusive perspectives. I worked with 10 Grade 11 learners between the ages
of 17 to 21. The main research question was as follows: How can art-based methods be used to
explore and change the hegemonic HIV and AIDS narratives of Grade 11 learners in a traditional
KZN village school to facilitate an intersectional understanding of HIV and AIDS? The study was
divided into two cycles. In Cycle One, participants made drawings and wrote short narratives that
reflected their perspectives of HIV and AIDS at the time. The analysis revealed that participants
expressed gendered narratives, were influenced by patriarchal cultural narratives, and that stigma
and discrimination related to HIV were still rife in the community. The findings were critically
discussed in class, where I used the principles of transformative learning theory to disrupt the
narratives of the participating learners and help them to construct more inclusive and less
stigmatising perceptions of HIV and HIV-positive people.
In Cycle Two, participants made storyboards that reflected positive alternatives of the narratives
they presented in the first cycle. Their narratives in this cycle were more nuanced and reflected
an intersectional view of female vulnerability. Their storyboards countered the gendered narrative
of HIV and reflected their belief that education is essential to reduce stigma and change cultural
taboos. Participants shared that this study was helpful as they learnt how to be open-minded and
more accepting of people infected and affected by HIV. They also experienced the art-based
methods as more engaging and interesting and expressed the wish that teachers in other subjects
would also adopt such methods. The findings provide insight into how teachers may use various
art-based methods to make their teaching more relevant to the lives of the learners in their specific
community. The suggested guidelines may help teachers to develop LO lessons that open up
space for the life experiences and local knowledge of learners in rural communities to be heard.
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