Young people often turn to their teachers for information on sexuality and HIV and Aids. Consequently teachers need to be not only knowledgeable about these issues but also able to integrate them into their teaching. As part of an umbrella study to investigate and promote HIV and Aids education and support in schools, this article reports on a qualitative study conducted among a purposively selected sample of teachers in Shurugwi schools to ascertain their response to the challenges resulting from the pandemic. The findings suggest that the participating teachers held complex and contradictory views about HIV and Aids education; that they were constrained by the prevailing social and cultural background; and that their responses were inhibited by the lack of adequate social welfare support systems. These factors combined to make it difficult for them to interpret and implement policy that calls for a coherent and collaborative response. This study will hopefully inform professional development interventions to ensure that future HIV and AIDS teaching and learning is relevant and effective, given the social and educational context.
In recent times the entire public education sector in Zimbabwe underwent a significant deterioration in quality. In 2009 the state appointed National Education Advisory Board similarly noted with concern the increasingly worsening state of education in the primary and secondary schools in rural and urban areas. However, worryingly, official and scholarly attention focused on the mainstream conventional schools, ignoring a sub-category of uniquely circumstanced rural schools, located on newly resettled farming areas. To inquire about the state of education in these schools, the researchers employed a mixed methods design, sending out open-ended questionnaires to twenty school teachers and headmasters at four primary schools in the newly resettled farming areas in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. The questionnaire focused on the availability of print curriculum materials and the coping strategies used by teachers working in schools on newly resettled farms. The study established that schools on newly resettled farms face acute shortages of textbooks in all subjects for both pupils and teachers. Where the print curriculum materials are available, they are in most cases of very limited quantity and variety. The study also established that this shortage of print curriculum materials negatively impacts on the quality of curriculum delivery as teachers resort to teacher-centred and transmissive approaches as a way of coping with the shortage of learning resources. Following these findings, the study recommended that the educational authorities in Zimbabwe should adopt a positive discrimination model of resource distribution whereby schools in the newly resettled farming areas are given preferential consideration when it comes to resource allocation.
After pragmatically tinkering with quantity-oriented models of teacher education since early 1980s, Zimbabwe now seems to be faced with quality challenges, necessitating change of policy direction. In recent years, disquiet has been voiced about the declining quality of school education, a trend widely attributed to the low quality of teachers. This has put teacher education provision in Zimbabwe in the spotlight of critical and in some instances derisive scrutiny. Under such circumstances, one would reasonably expect teacher education policy-makers to be diligently seized with change efforts. However, teacher education policy-makers seem to be dithering indecisively in relation to suggesting new directions for teacher education in Zimbabwe. This paper attempts to break the deafening silence in the teacher education policy community by suggesting some objects lessons for the teacher education system in Zimbabwe on the basis of insights derived from analyzing teacher education systems in the United Kingdom, United States and South Africa.
The purpose of this study was to establish the competences (knowledge, skills and abilities) required of effective early childhood education teachers as perceived by student teachers and to suggesthow competences can be acquired by student teachers before joining the teaching profession.Focus groups were conducted with student teachers who had done teaching practice and those who had not in two teachers'colleges in Masvingo province of Zimbabwe. Results indicated that specific competences were required across the domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor and affective). Academic preparation in teachers'colleges, field experiences and exposure to role models were suggested as useful ways of acquiring teaching competences.
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