Reconsidering and Repositioning HIV and AIDS Within Teacher Education

Abstract

Using the Higher Education HIV and AIDS module as an example of current HIV education practice, this article analyses contemporary orientations towards HIV and AIDS education in initial teacher education programmes. There is a need to refocus HIV teacher education to take cognisance of where people are at in their own contexts and also to consider the inclusion of orientations that disrupt dominant approaches that often assume a virus infecting a decontextualised body. The latter leads us to motivate for a move towards a pedagogy informed by a holistic framework, in which curriculum content and the context of learning are held in concert with each other, and where little in the pedagogic act is taken for granted.