Peer education programmes in Soweto schools : employee perceptions, knowledge, attitudes and implementation challanges

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It was the Gauteng Department of Education's noble idea to introduce staff peer education programmes in its institutions in an attempt to mitigate the impact HIV epidemic has on its employees, both school based and office based. Despite the department's rationale behind the introduction of staff peer education programmes in schools its implementation has encountered multiple challenges.In pursuit for the answers to the research question a qualitative research was conducted. Questionnaires were developed and distributed to fifteen teachers, of which five were trained as peer educators by the Gauteng Department of Education and ten were who were not trained as data collection techniques. The data collection techniques used were designed to assist the researcher to establish what the implementation challenges of the peer education programmes were and also to establish why members of staff in schools were not utilising these programmes.The findings revealed that peer education programmes were not implemented and also not utilised in some schools if not in all schools in Soweto, the reasons for non-implementation was basically because staff peer educators did not know what their roles and responsibilities entails as far as implementing the staff peer education programmes are concerned. The study also revealed that members of staff at schools' level were not aware of the existence of such programmes within their schools. The issue of trust was another obstacle that came up in the investigation as staff members revealed their unwillingness to discuss their HIV status with peer educators especially because they were colleagues from the same schools.It was therefore, recommended that staff peer educators be formally introduced to all members of staff and to the schools' community and during their introduction be sworn to secrecy and also be required to pledge publicly before resuming their roles and responsibilities as peer educators. It was further recommended that guidelines be developed for effective and to create uniformity in the implementation of these programmes. Peer education forums were to be established whereby peer educators can meet on regular basis to share ideas on good practices and help each other deal with challenges they encounter when implementing these programmes. Further research on the subject was also recommended and be extended and escalated right up to provincial and national level.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University