Mathabo Senkepeng Khau | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (original) (raw)
Papers by Mathabo Senkepeng Khau
Educational research for social change, May 9, 2024
Educational research for social change, 2020
Southern African Review of Education with Education with Production, 2016
In pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards zero HIV infections, global initia... more In pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards zero HIV infections, global initiatives have been put in place to curb the spread of the virus, with education one of the key strategies. However, research evidence has shown that the use of education as a vaccine against HIV has not been successful in curbing new infections among young people. Lesotho, a country with one of the highest rates of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa, also employed educational initiatives to protect its youth against HIV. Studies have shown that such initiatives have also not been very successful in reducing the levels of HIV among Basotho youth. This paper therefore presents, through a genealogical analysis, the historical and contextual underpinnings of sexuality, HIV and AIDS education in Lesotho. This is aimed at highlighting the contestations within the sexuality education curriculum and how these have shaped the structuring and delivery of sexuality education in Lesotho schools. It a...
HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have led to the implementation of several prevention initiativ... more HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have led to the implementation of several prevention initiatives, with sexuality education being hailed as the vaccine against new HIV infections. However, few studies have been conducted on teachers' preparedness, experiences and the effectiveness of teacher-delivered sexuality education in African schools. Even fewer studies take a gendered perspective on teachers' experiences of teaching this value-laden subject area. This book, therefore, provides a gendered analysis of women's experiences of teaching sexuality education in rural schools and the current im/possibility of woman teacher-hood in sexuality education. It highlights the gender dynamics characteristic of rural patriarchal societies and how they are implicated in sexuality education. This book should be useful to professionals in teacher education and curriculum development fields, gender and sexuality studies, as well as anyone interested in the prevention of HIV through s...
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 2018
This article seeks to address what it means to be an ‘engaged’ university and, in so doing, to co... more This article seeks to address what it means to be an ‘engaged’ university and, in so doing, to contribute to current discourses – in a fast growing field – about how to collaborate with communities for meaningful social transformation. As a group of researchers from the faculty of education in a South African university, we share our thinking and the theoretical notions that underpinned our planning and executing of a 3-year engagement with a rural secondary school. In asking ‘How might dialogic engagement of the university community and the community the university serves, enable agency towards active citizenship in the context of education?’, a collaborative engagement project between and within a school-community and the university was initiated. In this conceptual article, we unpack and discuss a critical university and school-community engagement with, and interpretation of, three key concepts that underpinned it: dialogic engagement, community and active citizenship. We conclu...
South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016
The National Framework for Quality Education in Rural Areas (DoE 2006) draws attention to educati... more The National Framework for Quality Education in Rural Areas (DoE 2006) draws attention to education in rural ecologies and scrutinises the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing teachers who understand the diverse contexts and who are able to facilitate quality teaching and learning in such contexts. This article explores how a teaching practice programme at a rural school can contribute to creating a sustainable learning environment, and cultivate a democratic citizenry. The article draws on work done in the project 'New teachers for new times': Visual methodologies for social change in rural education in the age of AIDS. It also argues that when pre-service teachers are taken out of their comfort zones to teach as a cohort in a school in a rural context, where they are enabled and supported by teacher-educators through daily debriefing and reflection, a shift in their thinking about teaching and about themselves as teachers and democratic citizens can occur.
Reading & Writing, 2015
In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments hav... more In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. Thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within South African classrooms and their impact. This article looks at the novel Broken promises by Roz Haden, which is read in many South African classrooms. From a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers’ identity construction in relation to the novel’s predominant discourses. The findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. Unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people’s functionality in society. We therefore argue t...
International Journal of English and Literature, 2020
The article explores pre-and in-service teachers’ perceptions of how unequal power relations cont... more The article explores pre-and in-service teachers’ perceptions of how unequal power relations contribute towards the spread of HIV and AIDS. The sample, consisting of 19 teachers; 6 pre-service teachers from a Higher Education Institution and 13 in-service teachers from a rural primary school shared their views, through the use of tableaus, on how power relations between males and females contributed towards HIV and AIDS.The findings, emerging from the teachers’ tableaus, demonstrated that they were aware of how gender identities contributed towards HIV and Aids.
SAHARA-J: Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS, 2019
In spite of the importance of sexuality education and HIV and AIDS education in preventing HIV in... more In spite of the importance of sexuality education and HIV and AIDS education in preventing HIV infections, Zimbabwean secondary school Guidance and Counseling teachers are not engaging optimally with the current Guidance and Counseling, HIV and AIDS & Life Skills education curriculum, and hence, they are not serving the needs of the learners in the context of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The aim of the study, therefore, was to explore how Guidance and Counseling teachers could be enabled to teach the necessary critical content in sexuality education in the HIV and AIDS education curriculum. A qualitative research design, informed by a critical paradigm, using participatory visual methodology and methods such as drawing and focus group discussion, was used with eight purposively selected Guidance and Counseling teachers from Gweru district, Zimbabwe. The study was theoretically framed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory. Guidance and Counseling teachers found themselves in a community with diverse cultural practices and beliefs of which some seemed to contradict what was supposed to be taught in the curriculum. The participatory visual methodology, however, enabled a process in which the Guidance and Counseling teachers could reflect on themselves, the context in which they taught, their sexuality education work and learn how to navigate the contradictions and tensions, and to use such contradictions as sources of learning and sources for change. The results have several implications for policy in terms of the Guidance and Counseling curriculum and engaging with cultural issues; and for practice in terms of teacher professional development, teacher training, and for stakeholder contribution.
This study explores the memories of adolescent sexual experiences of female Basotho science teach... more This study explores the memories of adolescent sexual experiences of female Basotho science teachers in order to understand the influence of such experiences on their approach and handling of sexuality, HIV and AIDS education. My argument is that Basotho teachers arc facing a challenge of integrating sexuality, HIV and AIDS education into their teaching largely because of their lived sexuality experiences, which have been shaped institutionally and through societal expectations. An eclectic theoretical approach, with emphasis on feminism and involving Dewey's philosophies of experience informed the study. A qualitative research design was used. Data was produced through one-on-one semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and memory work with three participants. I was a participant-researcher and hence contributed my experiences to the study. Field notes and journal entries were used to supplement the data. The storied lives of the women teachers have been shared in th...
Educational Research for Social Change
Discussion of sexual rights in the context of disability is an often neglected and underdeveloped... more Discussion of sexual rights in the context of disability is an often neglected and underdeveloped terrain within the human rights discourse, worldwide. More so, it becomes taboo to discuss the sexual health and reproductive rights of adolescents living with disabilities. This group of adolescents are often constructed as being sexually innocent, asexual, or lacking sexual agency thus denying their sexual autonomy. In other contexts, adolescents living with disabilities are constructed as hypersexual, thus putting them at risk of sexual exploitation and harm. While the human rights terrain has begun to acknowledge adolescents living with disabilities as ordinary citizens with rights equal to those of other citizens, they have not fully been recognised as sexual beings in their own right as human beings, especially in the Global South. Thus, in this article I aim at rethinking an inclusive sexuality education in South African schools that caters for the special needs of adolescents li...
Educational Research for Social Change
Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemo... more Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemorial. This discrimination has infiltrated all spheres of life including the naming, shaming, blaming, and persecution of deviant people as witches. The phenomenon of witchcraft has historically been negatively skewed towards women, with women's gender and sexual diversity being used against them in accusations of witchcraft. In some modern-day African communities, gender and sexual diversity are still regarded as witchcraft or a result of bewitching. While activism against witchcraft has gathered momentum across Africa, it is worth noting that in Lesotho, such activism began in the precolonial era through the leadership of Chief Mohlomi. In this paper, we explore the understandings and experiences of constructions of difference as witchcraft among the Basotho of Lesotho. Using a qualitative research approach, we employed life-history narratives and focus group discussions to generate...
... quite. (Thuto) Young people are at a stage when they are having an identity crisis. This bri... more ... quite. (Thuto) Young people are at a stage when they are having an identity crisis. This brings them enough problems on its own without the added hassle of being sidelined in issues that affect the very construction of their identities. They need information to make informed ...
Educational Research for Social Change, 2022
Educational Research for Social Change, 2022
Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemo... more Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemorial. This discrimination has infiltrated all spheres of life including the naming, shaming, blaming, and persecution of deviant people as witches. The phenomenon of witchcraft has historically been negatively skewed towards women, with women's gender and sexual diversity being used against them in accusations of witchcraft. In some modern-day African communities, gender and sexual diversity are still regarded as witchcraft or a result of bewitching. While activism against witchcraft has gathered momentum across Africa, it is worth noting that in Lesotho, such activism began in the precolonial era through the leadership of Chief Mohlomi. In this paper, we explore the understandings and experiences of constructions of difference as witchcraft among the Basotho of Lesotho. Using a qualitative research approach, we employed life-history narratives and focus group discussions to generate data with 10 Basotho men and women aged 70-93 years. We used sankofa theory to frame our analysis of the data, which was done thematically. Drawing on the ethnographic data, we discuss lessons regarding constructions of difference as witchcraft, and Chief Mohlomi's (1720-1815) activism against the discrimination of those labelled as witches. The findings reveal that divergent gender and sexual characteristics and identities were used in labelling certain individuals as witches and unexplainable phenomena as witchcraft. However, the findings also show that Chief Mohlomi set in motion a spirited activism against the persecution of divergent people through his teachings, which led to transformed views on gender and sexual diversity among the Basotho. These findings have implications for an education that embraces diversity in all spheres of life to promote inclusive and sustainable communities.
Educational research for social change, May 9, 2024
Educational research for social change, 2020
Southern African Review of Education with Education with Production, 2016
In pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards zero HIV infections, global initia... more In pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards zero HIV infections, global initiatives have been put in place to curb the spread of the virus, with education one of the key strategies. However, research evidence has shown that the use of education as a vaccine against HIV has not been successful in curbing new infections among young people. Lesotho, a country with one of the highest rates of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa, also employed educational initiatives to protect its youth against HIV. Studies have shown that such initiatives have also not been very successful in reducing the levels of HIV among Basotho youth. This paper therefore presents, through a genealogical analysis, the historical and contextual underpinnings of sexuality, HIV and AIDS education in Lesotho. This is aimed at highlighting the contestations within the sexuality education curriculum and how these have shaped the structuring and delivery of sexuality education in Lesotho schools. It a...
HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have led to the implementation of several prevention initiativ... more HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have led to the implementation of several prevention initiatives, with sexuality education being hailed as the vaccine against new HIV infections. However, few studies have been conducted on teachers' preparedness, experiences and the effectiveness of teacher-delivered sexuality education in African schools. Even fewer studies take a gendered perspective on teachers' experiences of teaching this value-laden subject area. This book, therefore, provides a gendered analysis of women's experiences of teaching sexuality education in rural schools and the current im/possibility of woman teacher-hood in sexuality education. It highlights the gender dynamics characteristic of rural patriarchal societies and how they are implicated in sexuality education. This book should be useful to professionals in teacher education and curriculum development fields, gender and sexuality studies, as well as anyone interested in the prevention of HIV through s...
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 2018
This article seeks to address what it means to be an ‘engaged’ university and, in so doing, to co... more This article seeks to address what it means to be an ‘engaged’ university and, in so doing, to contribute to current discourses – in a fast growing field – about how to collaborate with communities for meaningful social transformation. As a group of researchers from the faculty of education in a South African university, we share our thinking and the theoretical notions that underpinned our planning and executing of a 3-year engagement with a rural secondary school. In asking ‘How might dialogic engagement of the university community and the community the university serves, enable agency towards active citizenship in the context of education?’, a collaborative engagement project between and within a school-community and the university was initiated. In this conceptual article, we unpack and discuss a critical university and school-community engagement with, and interpretation of, three key concepts that underpinned it: dialogic engagement, community and active citizenship. We conclu...
South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016
The National Framework for Quality Education in Rural Areas (DoE 2006) draws attention to educati... more The National Framework for Quality Education in Rural Areas (DoE 2006) draws attention to education in rural ecologies and scrutinises the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing teachers who understand the diverse contexts and who are able to facilitate quality teaching and learning in such contexts. This article explores how a teaching practice programme at a rural school can contribute to creating a sustainable learning environment, and cultivate a democratic citizenry. The article draws on work done in the project 'New teachers for new times': Visual methodologies for social change in rural education in the age of AIDS. It also argues that when pre-service teachers are taken out of their comfort zones to teach as a cohort in a school in a rural context, where they are enabled and supported by teacher-educators through daily debriefing and reflection, a shift in their thinking about teaching and about themselves as teachers and democratic citizens can occur.
Reading & Writing, 2015
In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments hav... more In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. Thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within South African classrooms and their impact. This article looks at the novel Broken promises by Roz Haden, which is read in many South African classrooms. From a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers’ identity construction in relation to the novel’s predominant discourses. The findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. Unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people’s functionality in society. We therefore argue t...
International Journal of English and Literature, 2020
The article explores pre-and in-service teachers’ perceptions of how unequal power relations cont... more The article explores pre-and in-service teachers’ perceptions of how unequal power relations contribute towards the spread of HIV and AIDS. The sample, consisting of 19 teachers; 6 pre-service teachers from a Higher Education Institution and 13 in-service teachers from a rural primary school shared their views, through the use of tableaus, on how power relations between males and females contributed towards HIV and AIDS.The findings, emerging from the teachers’ tableaus, demonstrated that they were aware of how gender identities contributed towards HIV and Aids.
SAHARA-J: Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS, 2019
In spite of the importance of sexuality education and HIV and AIDS education in preventing HIV in... more In spite of the importance of sexuality education and HIV and AIDS education in preventing HIV infections, Zimbabwean secondary school Guidance and Counseling teachers are not engaging optimally with the current Guidance and Counseling, HIV and AIDS & Life Skills education curriculum, and hence, they are not serving the needs of the learners in the context of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The aim of the study, therefore, was to explore how Guidance and Counseling teachers could be enabled to teach the necessary critical content in sexuality education in the HIV and AIDS education curriculum. A qualitative research design, informed by a critical paradigm, using participatory visual methodology and methods such as drawing and focus group discussion, was used with eight purposively selected Guidance and Counseling teachers from Gweru district, Zimbabwe. The study was theoretically framed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory. Guidance and Counseling teachers found themselves in a community with diverse cultural practices and beliefs of which some seemed to contradict what was supposed to be taught in the curriculum. The participatory visual methodology, however, enabled a process in which the Guidance and Counseling teachers could reflect on themselves, the context in which they taught, their sexuality education work and learn how to navigate the contradictions and tensions, and to use such contradictions as sources of learning and sources for change. The results have several implications for policy in terms of the Guidance and Counseling curriculum and engaging with cultural issues; and for practice in terms of teacher professional development, teacher training, and for stakeholder contribution.
This study explores the memories of adolescent sexual experiences of female Basotho science teach... more This study explores the memories of adolescent sexual experiences of female Basotho science teachers in order to understand the influence of such experiences on their approach and handling of sexuality, HIV and AIDS education. My argument is that Basotho teachers arc facing a challenge of integrating sexuality, HIV and AIDS education into their teaching largely because of their lived sexuality experiences, which have been shaped institutionally and through societal expectations. An eclectic theoretical approach, with emphasis on feminism and involving Dewey's philosophies of experience informed the study. A qualitative research design was used. Data was produced through one-on-one semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and memory work with three participants. I was a participant-researcher and hence contributed my experiences to the study. Field notes and journal entries were used to supplement the data. The storied lives of the women teachers have been shared in th...
Educational Research for Social Change
Discussion of sexual rights in the context of disability is an often neglected and underdeveloped... more Discussion of sexual rights in the context of disability is an often neglected and underdeveloped terrain within the human rights discourse, worldwide. More so, it becomes taboo to discuss the sexual health and reproductive rights of adolescents living with disabilities. This group of adolescents are often constructed as being sexually innocent, asexual, or lacking sexual agency thus denying their sexual autonomy. In other contexts, adolescents living with disabilities are constructed as hypersexual, thus putting them at risk of sexual exploitation and harm. While the human rights terrain has begun to acknowledge adolescents living with disabilities as ordinary citizens with rights equal to those of other citizens, they have not fully been recognised as sexual beings in their own right as human beings, especially in the Global South. Thus, in this article I aim at rethinking an inclusive sexuality education in South African schools that caters for the special needs of adolescents li...
Educational Research for Social Change
Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemo... more Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemorial. This discrimination has infiltrated all spheres of life including the naming, shaming, blaming, and persecution of deviant people as witches. The phenomenon of witchcraft has historically been negatively skewed towards women, with women's gender and sexual diversity being used against them in accusations of witchcraft. In some modern-day African communities, gender and sexual diversity are still regarded as witchcraft or a result of bewitching. While activism against witchcraft has gathered momentum across Africa, it is worth noting that in Lesotho, such activism began in the precolonial era through the leadership of Chief Mohlomi. In this paper, we explore the understandings and experiences of constructions of difference as witchcraft among the Basotho of Lesotho. Using a qualitative research approach, we employed life-history narratives and focus group discussions to generate...
... quite. (Thuto) Young people are at a stage when they are having an identity crisis. This bri... more ... quite. (Thuto) Young people are at a stage when they are having an identity crisis. This brings them enough problems on its own without the added hassle of being sidelined in issues that affect the very construction of their identities. They need information to make informed ...
Educational Research for Social Change, 2022
Educational Research for Social Change, 2022
Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemo... more Discrimination according to gender has been in practice in communities globally since time immemorial. This discrimination has infiltrated all spheres of life including the naming, shaming, blaming, and persecution of deviant people as witches. The phenomenon of witchcraft has historically been negatively skewed towards women, with women's gender and sexual diversity being used against them in accusations of witchcraft. In some modern-day African communities, gender and sexual diversity are still regarded as witchcraft or a result of bewitching. While activism against witchcraft has gathered momentum across Africa, it is worth noting that in Lesotho, such activism began in the precolonial era through the leadership of Chief Mohlomi. In this paper, we explore the understandings and experiences of constructions of difference as witchcraft among the Basotho of Lesotho. Using a qualitative research approach, we employed life-history narratives and focus group discussions to generate data with 10 Basotho men and women aged 70-93 years. We used sankofa theory to frame our analysis of the data, which was done thematically. Drawing on the ethnographic data, we discuss lessons regarding constructions of difference as witchcraft, and Chief Mohlomi's (1720-1815) activism against the discrimination of those labelled as witches. The findings reveal that divergent gender and sexual characteristics and identities were used in labelling certain individuals as witches and unexplainable phenomena as witchcraft. However, the findings also show that Chief Mohlomi set in motion a spirited activism against the persecution of divergent people through his teachings, which led to transformed views on gender and sexual diversity among the Basotho. These findings have implications for an education that embraces diversity in all spheres of life to promote inclusive and sustainable communities.