Efficacy of school-based HIV and AIDS education in achieving behaviour change in Kenya: towards a contextual model (original) (raw)
Related papers
Educational Research Review, 2009
Although there seems to be a high level of awareness of the HIV and AIDS menace among the youth, their behavior does not reflect this level of awareness. There seems to be a mismatch between HIV and AIDS Programme objectives and behavior change among the youth. However, this level of mismatch has not been established for effective intervention strategies to be put in place. The purpose of this study was to determine the gap between the objectives and actual HIV and AIDS education programme delivery in Siaya district public secondary schools, Kenya. Four instruments were used in the study: questionnaire, focus group discussions, interview schedule and documents analysis guide. Population of the study was 3205, which comprised of 68 head teachers, 719 teachers and 2418 students. The study selected 1/3 of the population by stratified random technique by sex to form the sample. The study established that whereas students believed they had begun exhibiting the expected change of behaviour, teachers felt that this was minimal to enable them prevent and control the spread of HIV among the youth. This suggested that there seem to exist a gap between objectives and actual HIV and AIDS education programme delivery and behavioral changes among the youth in secondary schools in Siaya district. Strategies of closing the gap are explored from the perspectives of teachers and students respectively.
HIV/AIDS education is supposed to not only be a medium of creating awareness but also most importantly promote practices and skills to enable HIV prevention among youth in schools. This article reports on a study whose purpose was to assess the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS education in promoting interventions for a supportive environment in secondary schools. Specifically, the study sought to find out the extent to which interventions for a supportive environment for HIV/AIDS prevention were emphasized to youth; and explore the factors that influenced the promotion of the interventions. The study focused on youth involvement, parental involvement and HIV/AIDS prevention friendly school policies. The findings of the study established that the potential of the youth in enabling HIV/AIDS prevention among their fellow peers was not fully exploited. Parental involvement was low especially among the fathers. Parents rarely engaged in discussions on topics that dealt with sexuality. HIV/AIDS prevention friendly policies were ineffectively promoted in schools. Factors that influenced the promotion of the interventions were explored.
Background: Primary School Action for Better Health (PSABH) became the national HIV prevention curriculum of Kenya in 2005. Objective: To examined implementation of PSABH and student risk behaviour s. Setting: Muhuru, a rural division of Nyanza Province. Subjects: One thousand one hundred and forty six students aged 9-21 years from six primary schools in Muhuru. Outcome measures: Anonymous surveys were administered to assess students' exposure to PSABH curriculum components, sexual activity, condom use, and self-efficacy related to engaging in lower risk behaviours. Results: The six schools implementing PSABH were not implementing the full curriculum. Fifty-five percent of males and 44% of females reported a history of sexual activity. For females, condom self-efficacy was related to lower risk behaviour , while HIV education during pastoral instruction was associated with higher risk. Boys who reported higher self-efficacy and learning about abstinence strategies engaged in lower risk behaviour , while exposure to HIV education in assemblies and communication with relatives about HIV was associated with higher risk. Conclusion: Previous studies documented benefits of PSABH. However, it is unclear how effective the curriculum is after national scale-up. In this community, PSABH was implemented at a low level, with some curriculum components associated with higher risk behaviour , calling into question how PSABH is being delivered. Future studies should examine effective strategies for ongoing support, monitoring, and evaluation. Successfully disseminating evidence-based prevention strategies could reduce HIV incidence and the burden on healthcare providers struggling to care for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Journal of Education and Practice, 2014
HIV and AIDS pandemic is a global health concern which has been given a multi-sectoral approach to combat it. In Kenya, the Ministry of Education has adopted HIV and AIDS policy in which one of the strategies of achieving HIV and AIDS awareness among school-going youth is to have the infused HIV and AIDS education in the formal curriculum subjects. However it has not been established through empirical investigation whether or not the HIV and AIDS education has had an influence on the awareness of in-school youth in rural and urban areas differently. Therefore, this study comparatively investigated the influence of the infused HIV and AIDS education on students' awareness in public secondary schools of urban Ainamoi and rural Sigowet divisions in Kericho County. The objectives were to compare the influence of the infused HIV and AIDS education on students' mastery of HIV and AIDS facts, behaviour change among students and attitudes towards infected people. The study was informed by Holmes' problem-solving approach, Becker's health belief model, Bandura's self-efficacy and social learning theory and Green's Precede-Proceed model of health behavior. The study adopted a comparative research design whereby a rural sample and an urban sample of form four students selected from a target population of 2840 students in public secondary schools in Kericho county were compared. Stratified random sampling was used to select respondents from purposively sampled schools. Data was collected using questionnaires and an interview schedule whose validity was enhanced through a pilot study. The split-half reliability test was done to determine the reliability level of the data collection instruments. Data was presented as tabulated frequencies and percentages. The chi-square statistic was used to analyze data at a 0.05 level of confidence. Interview responses were obtained as qualitative data and were reported verbatim. The results of the study showed that there were significant differences between students in rural and urban schools with regard to knowledge of HIV and AIDS facts, level of behavior change and attitudes towards HIV and AIDS infected people. Students in urban secondary schools were found to be better informed about HIV and AIDS facts; they had a more positive attitude towards infected people and exhibited a higher level of behavior change compared to students in rural secondary schools.' The study recommends a revision of the curriculum to give HIV and AIDS education a multi-faceted approach including co-curricular activities and seminars for parents.
Journal of HIV and AIDS, 2018
Primary schools in Kenya provide a promising venue for widespread delivery of HIV prevention interventions. This article describes the development and evaluation of Making Life's Responsible Choices (MLRC), a school-based HIV prevention intervention for primary school children developed through a collaborative global partnership involving multiple community stakeholders. Intervention development was informed by extensive reviews of youth-focused evidence-based HIV prevention interventions, and was rooted in both the Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Cognitive Theory. MLRC includes six modules: 1) self-awareness, 2) human sexuality, 3) healthy relationships, 4) drug/ alcohol abuse, 5) HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, and 6) behavior change. Class 5 pupils (N=1846; 52.1% girls, 47.9% boys; mean age=12) attending 46 different Catholic-sponsored public and private primary schools throughout Kenya participated in the evaluation of the intervention program which was delivered in the classroom and occurred over the course of 40 weeks (one academic term). Changes in knowledge and behavioral intentions were assessed using a one-group pre-test post-test experimental design. Pupils completed module-specific assessment measures, and paired samples t-tests were used to compare changes in knowledge and behavioral intentions at the classroom level. Gender-specific analyses were also conducted. All six modules displayed statistically significant positive changes in the mean percentage of knowledge items answered correctly for the full sample, with marginal gender differences revealed. Statistically significant health-promoting changes were seen in 11 of the 18 behavioral intention items (3 per module), with gender differences also revealed. Findings suggest that implementing interventions such as MLRC has the potential to thwart the spread of HIV among youth in Kenya, and equip youth with health-promoting skills. In addition, school-based programs have the potential to become institutionalized in school settings in order to maintain their long-term sustainability.
International journal of emerging trends in science and technology, 2018
National AIDS Control Council and the Ministry of Education Science and Technology in Kenya developed the 2004 Education Sector Policy on HIV and AIDS. The policy was intended to reduce HIV/AIDS infection and stigmatisation of people living with HIV in the education sector. However, it is not known how implementation of the policy has affected students' knowledge and their attitude towards sexual behaviour in secondary schools in Coast Region of Kenya. The research study investigated the students' knowledge of HIV/AIDS and their attitude towards sexual behaviour in secondary schools in coast region of Kenya. The target population was 108693 respondents in 362 public secondary schools in the Coast Region of Kenya. Purposive and random sampling methods were used to choose the participants. The samples comprised of 388 students of which 193 were Form 1 and 195 were Form 4 students in 13 secondary schools. The validity of the questionnaires was checked experts at Chuka University. Test-retest method was used to compute reliability coefficient from the data collected from the pilot study. Reliability coefficient for the instruments was 0.8. The descriptive statistics used were frequencies and percentage. Chi-squire statistics was used to test the hypotheses in the study. The hypotheses testing were done at α = 0.05 levels of significance and the analyses was done using SPSS computer programme version 20.0. The findings showed that there was a positive relationship between Form 1 and Form 4 students' knowledge of HIV/AIDS in secondary schools in Coast Region of Kenya. The study also revealed that there was negative relationship between Form 1 and Form 4 students' attitude towards sexual behaviour. It was recommended that secondary schools should enhance the teaching of HIV/AIDS\education in order to reduce HIV infection AIDS among secondary students in Coast region, Kenya.
Editon Consortium Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Studies (ISSN: 2663-8525) , 2019
The purpose of the study was to establish the influence of teaching strategies on the implementation of integrated HIV/AIDS education in the secondary school curriculum. In Kenya, HIV/AIDS remains a significant challenge in all sectors of the economy; education is included. Failure in addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS would, therefore, put the country at the high risk of losing all the gains it has made in the education sector. The Innovation Decision Process Theory and the Health Belief Model guided the study. The study adopted a postpositivist philosophy paradigm. The mixed research design was adopted. The selection of 30 headteachers was made using purposive sampling, whereas 120 teachers stratified sampling and 528 students were selected using simple random sampling. Students' and teachers' questionnaire and head teachers interviews were used to obtain the required data from the respondents. Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha was used to establish the reliability and validity of the research instrument determined using expert judgment. The data was therefore analyzed using inferential statistics and descriptive statistics with the aid of Statistics Packages for Social Sciences version 21. The inferential statistics comprised of Spearman's rank correlation, t-test and multiple regression. From the multiple regression model, (R2 = .810) showed that all the predictors used the account for 81% variation in the implementation of the integrated HIV/AIDS education. The study recommends that the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development provide in-service training for teachers on HIV/AIDS education. The study also suggests that high priority must be given to training teachers to teach HIV/AIDS.
2011
Recent statistics indicate that new HIV infections are primarily occurring among the youth. Teachers are also among the highly trained professionals who are dying of AIDS in large numbers. This means that the knowledge acquired from AIDS education has not translated into relevant behaviour modification. The attitudes teachers and students have towards I-IIV/AIDS education COUld explain this state of affairs. Attitudes predict future behaviour. They determine what one does or says and what one likes or dislikes. Thus attitudes towards HIV/AIDS knowledge may determine a persons , sexual behaviour. This study therefore sought to determine what attitudes teachers and students hold towards HIV/AIDS education in secondary schools. The researcher also hoped to establish whether gender, religious affiliation, training in HIV/AIDS, teaching and learning about HIV/AIDS have an influence on these attitudes. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. Teachers and students from Nakuru Municipality formed the population of the study from which a sample of 80 teachers and 120 students were selected using the stratified random sampling technique. Data was collected using the teacher attitude scale and the student attitude scale. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. It was found out that teachers and students generally hold positive attitudes towards HIV/AIDS education in secondary schools. The conclusion made was that the irresponsible sexual behaviour among teacher s and students alluded to is not attributable to their attitudes toward HIV/AIDS education but the inadequate knowledge of HIV/AIDS and lack of relevant training for teachers. It also emerged from this study that attitudes though important, are not sufficient for altering sexual behaviour of both teachers and students. Therefore, a multi-dimensional approach is recommended in sexual behaviour modification aimed at curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS. The study further recommends that similar studies be undertaken in rural and other urban centres to provide data for comparative analysis.
“If You Don't Abstain, You Will Die of AIDS”: AIDS Education in Kenyan Public Schools
AIDS Education and Prevention, 2009
We explored constraints of implementing AIDS education in public schools in Kenya. Sixty interviews with teachers and 60 focus group discussions with students were conducted in 21 primary and nine secondary schools. System/school-level constraints included lack of time in the curriculum, limited reach of secondary-school students (because AIDS education is embedded in biology, which is not compulsory), and disapproval of openness about sex and condoms by the Ministry of Education and parents. Alternative strategies to teach about AIDS had their own constraints. Teachers lacked training and support and felt uncomfortable with the topic. They were not used to interactive teaching methods and sometimes breached confidentiality. Teachers' negative attitudes constrained students from seeking information. Training interventions should be provided to teachers to increase their self-confidence, foster more positive attitudes, and stimulate interactive teaching methods. The Ministry of Education needs to have a clear policy toward the promotion of condoms.
Quasi-experimental evaluation of a national primary school HIV intervention in Kenya
Evaluation and Program Planning, 2007
This study examined the impact of a primary-school HIV education initiative on the knowledge, self-efficacy and sexual and condom use activities of upper primary-school pupils in Kenya. A quasi-experimental mixed qualitative-quantitative pre-and 18-month postdesign using 40 intervention and 40 matched control schools demonstrated significant program impact on targeted objectives of (1) adequate program delivery and, for standard 6 and 7 pupils (ages 11-16 years), (2) increased HIV-related knowledge; (3) increased communication with parents and teachers about HIV and sexuality; (4) increased assistance to fellow pupils to avoid sexual activity; (5) increased self-efficacy related to abstinence and condom use; (6) decreased exposure to HIV through delayed first intercourse, decreased sexual activity and increased condom. Results support the conclusions that the existing infrastructure is adequate for national roll-out of the program; that the program has its most beneficial effect on sexually inexperienced youth and should therefore be implemented with the youngest age groups possible; and that gains are gender specific, with boys reporting increased condom use while girls are more likely to decrease or delay sexual activity. Based on these results, the program began national roll-out to all primary schools in 2005. By June 2006, the program was operating in 11,000 of the country's nearly 19,000 schools. r