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This paper explores students', preservice teachers' and inservice teachers' perceptions of the contributions and challenges of using participatory visual methodologies (PVM) to enhance HIV education in rural schools. Drawing on findings from three research projects conducted in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, four positive contributions are identified: 1) novelty, fun and engagement; 2) amplifying youth voices; 3) the facilitation of teachers' reflexive learning; and 4) the production of local resources in under-resourced schools. Challenges include: 1) limited technology access; 2) teacher discomfort; and 3) resistance to PVM integration. Teachers and young people, especially in under resourced rural settings, can benefit from integrating such methodologies into their responses to HIV and AIDS. However, sustainable integration must rely on choosing the most appropriate participatory visual methodologies given the technological resources available in school. The paper concludes with recommendations to optimise participatory visual methodologies integration into rural school-based HIV responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw from elements of a study that sought to examine how teenage South African girls, both white and black African, articulate their relationship with online sexually explicit materials (SEM). The study contributes to the literature by resisting the dominant discursive practices underlined by the construction of sexuality as an exclusive realm of danger for teenage girls. Challenging this static version of femininity, we focus on the ways in which teenage girls, aged between 13 and 18 years old in two elite private schools, use online SEM to expand their sexual knowledge and engage in pleasurable forms of sexuality. By drawing on individual interviews, focus group discussions and open-ended visual elicitation research methods, we show how girls embrace online SEM in ways that expand the definition of femininity beyond fearing sexuality whilst demonstrating the entanglement with gender inequalities. Girls' relationship with online SEM, whilst tenuous, disrupts normative assumptions around femininity. However, an ambiguous relationship with online SEM is evident as their challenges to dominant femininity are mediated by concerns about respect and innocence, as well as by persistent evidence of male power within online SEM. Implications for school-based sexuality education concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the views of male and female learners regarding how Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education is taught at their schools. Learners in the study were selected from five former 'Black' schools in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. Focus groups were used to identify what learners could recall about their LO sexuality education classes. The strong trend in the data speaks to how LO sexuality education implies a gendered, heteronormative and moralistic approach to youth sexuality which silences and negates same sex relationships and girls' accounts of sexuality. Although LO sexuality curricula are, as crafted on paper, often sophisticated learning programmes, participants point to a disjuncture between the official LO sexuality education curriculum and how LO sexuality education is taught in the studied schools. The paper concludes with some specific recommendations for teachers to promote a non-judgemental approach to sexuality education that challenges heteronormativity and other gendered injustices as part of the teaching of LO sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality education, as a component within the Life Orientation (LO) programme in South African schools, is intended to provide young people with knowledge and skills to make informed choices about their sexuality, their own health and that of others. Key to the programme are outcomes relating to power, power relations and gender. In this paper, we apply a critical gender lens to explore the ways in which the teaching of sexuality education engages with larger goals of gender justice. The paper draws from a number of ethnographic studies conducted at 12 South African schools. We focus here on the data collected from focus group discussions with learners, and semi-structured interviews with individual learners, principals and Life Orientation (LO) teachers. The paper highlights the complexities of having gender justice as a central goal of LO sexuality education. Teaching sexuality education is reported to contradict dominant community values and norms. Although some principals and school authorities support gender equity and problematize hegemonic masculinities, learners experience sexuality education as upholding normative gender roles and male power, rather than challenging it. Teachers rely heavily on cautionary messages that put more responsibility for reproductive health on female learners, and use didactic, authoritative pedagogical techniques, which do not acknowledge young people’s experience nor facilitate their sexual agency. These complexities need to be foregrounded and worked with systematically if the goal of gender justice within LO is to be realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A holistic well-being approach, understood as an approach that pays attention to the promotion of individual, relational and collective well-being in a particular context, is proposed as a way to address the fragmented nature in which mental health and well-being programmes are implemented in school communities in South Africa. The goal of this paper is to indicate key aspects for sustainable coordination of a process to facilitate holistic well-being in South African schools. Research was conducted in six South African schools with the aim of developing an integrated, multilevel process to facilitate holistic well-being in these contexts. A participatory action learning and action research approach was applied. As part of this research, key aspects that could contribute to the sustainable coordination of holistic well-being were identified. The research comprised a cross-case analysis of the data gathered, as well as a focus group that was held with the coordinators who facilitated the development of the process in each school. In addition, the school principals completed a semi-structured questionnaire, and Skype interviews were conducted with four international experts. The five aspects identified as key to the sustainable coordination of well-being are: that ownership and responsibility should reside in the school context; that there should be a clear vision for the promotion of holistic well-being; that the connections between all involved should be deepened; that all efforts to promote holistic well-being should be integrated, and that the complexity of the process should be acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Youth gang involvement is a serious public health challenge and there is limited research with adolescents on their understandings of adolescent gang involvement, particularly in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This paper reports on the key theme of adolescents' experiences of youth gangs which emerged from qualitative research exploring adolescents' experiences of daily life. Six focus groups and 10 individual interviews were conducted with adolescents aged 13–14 years. Four factors were identified as protective against gang involvement; access to resources, school achievement, positive peer influences and supportive adult relationships. These findings illustrate the multiple factors which contribute to youth gang involvement and highlight the need for interventions to take an integrated and uniform approach to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors at the individual, family, school and community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]