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The health and well-being of young people remains a critical issue. For Indigenous girls and young women in Canada and South Africa, the situation is exacerbated by high rates of sexual violence. The article draws on examples of artworks and close readings of several images of resistance produced by Indigenous girls and young women participating in a six-year study that seeks to address sexual violence in the two countries. Exploring resistance is an understudied area in relation to young people and well-being. Building on our visual research and fieldwork, we posit that the idea of "picturing (as) resistance" through the various participatory visual and arts-based tools is a promising area of investigation in relation to well-being.

The ubiquity of cellphones in South Africa, a country ravaged by HIV and AIDS, makes cellphones an easily accessible tool to use in participatory approaches to addressing HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome)issues, particularly in school contexts. In this article we explore a participatory visual approach undertaken with a group of rural teachers, to uncover and address HIV and AIDS related issues. Drawing on our experience in using participatory video, we used cellphones to produce cellphilms about youth and risk in the context of HIV and AIDS. Noting that the teachers brought highly didactic and moralistic tones into the cellphilms, we devised a "speaking back" approach to encourage reflection and an adjustment to their approaches when addressing HIV and AIDS issues with learners. We draw on the example of condom use in one cellphilm to demonstrate how a "speaking back" pedagogy can encourage reflection and participatory analysis, and contribute to deepening an understanding of how teachers might work with youth and risk in the context of HIV and AIDS.

At the risk of seeming to make exaggerated claims for visual methodologies, what I set out to do is lay bare some of the key elements of working with the visual as a set of methodologies and practices. In particular, I address educational research in South Africa at a time when questions of the social responsibility of the academic researcher (including postgraduate students as new researchers, as well as experienced researchers expanding their repertoire of being and doing) are critical. In so doing I seek to ensure that the term "visual methodologies" is not simply reduced to one practice or to one set of tools, and, at the same time, to ensure that this set of methodologies and practices is appreciated within its full complexity. I focus on the doing, and, in particular, on the various approaches to doing through drawings, photo-voice, photo-elicitation, researcher as photographer, working with family photos, cinematic texts, video production, material culture, advertising campaigns as nine key areas within visual methodologies.

This article advances the idea that rural youth and teachers are the key in leading community dialogue towards addressing gender-based violence (GBV) in their community through their film making. The youth voices on the realities of GBV in their school and community, in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, captured through the process of participatory video, are used to engage a group of their teachers in thinking about addressing GBV in the school and community. The teachers' engagement with the five participatory videos on GBV--through participatory analysis and participatory archiving--provided an opportunity to deepen their understanding of GBV by also interrogating their own stance and led them to direct the production of a composite video suitable for use in leading community dialogue on a future without violence.

We explore the place that the digital can occupy in teachers' pedagogical practices around social justice and especially how memory-work can deepen and enhance teacher practices. Like Walter Benjamin, we see memory as being a medium for exploring the past and where the digital provides greater opportunities for teachers to work productively across geographical contexts that are wrestling with issues of social justice. We argue for the potential of Michael Rothberg's notion of multidirectional memory as a logical direction in which to pursue notions of cross-border, transnational productive remembering facilitated by digital means. We also pose a number of questions we see as critical for working through and "reflecting forward" on issues central to digital scholarship within the context of multidirectional memory.

This polyvocal text is both a narrative and a dialogue between two scholar-activist researchers working in rural communities in distinct parts of the world--South Africa and Southern Mexico--sharing their experiences of using cellular phone and camcorders, while also exploring the potential sustainability of these technologies in the context of rural communities engaging with participatory video projects. These communities are not only playing an increasingly salient role as the mediators of this technology, but through their practices they are drawing much needed attention to the ways in which the researcher-participant dynamic in participatory video practices can be transformed into a more autonomous and participant-led set of practices. The article considers the ways these media forms carry the potential to imagine and honour different worldviews.

Rurality is an active agent and central to the lived experiences of children growing up on a farm and attending a farm school. It is a key to their everyday experiences, and influences family life, schooling and their future. Previous studies elsewhere in the world have explored the notion of childhood in rural contexts, but there is a dearth of similar research in South Africa, which has a vast section of the population living in rural areas and therefore a vast number of children attending school in rural areas. A farm school--a public school on private property--provides the context for this study's exploration of children's views of family life in a rural area. The data was obtained using drawing as a visual participatory methodology with 16 primary school children, aged between 6 and 10, both boys and girls, providing an insider local perspective on growing up on a farm in a rural environment. How do children picture their lives? What do these pictures tell about rural family life? How does this influence schooling? This paper reports the findings and makes critical recommendations for turning the tide for children in rural education contexts. (Contains 4 figures and 3 endnotes.)

Gender-based violence is a reality in many societies and is linked to the spread of HIV and AIDS. There have been numerous studies that have attempted to acquire an understanding of the breadth and depth of the issues around gender-based violence. However, one area that has received scant attention is the voices of women teachers. Thus, in this article, drawing on qualitative research and focus group interviews, we explore the voices of women teachers who teach in a rural school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, around their views of gender-based violence. We conclude that their voices, both in relation to broader societal issues as well as in the school context, speak about a strong awareness of what is generally regarded as the "foundation" of gender-based violence, i.e. gender inequality. (Contains 2 notes.)

In this three-phase exploratory study, we used participatory approaches with youth in a small Canadian province. Through iterative focus groups in school settings, we examined young men and women's perspectives regarding factors important to taking control of their sexual health behaviour. Youth aged 15-17 discussed sexual health through role-play, reflective writing, and drawing. This study provides a view into the gender and sexual scripts of many young people as they construct a repertoire of prevention skills. These insights can offer key understandings into the social composition of sexual risk, as well as the possibilities for sexual health promotion among young people. This is especially important for populations affected by socio-economic disparity. (Contains 1 figure.)

Abject generational hardship is a systemic phenomenon which denies people a higher quality of life by limiting their access to basic life necessities. The article focuses on a group of ten girls between the ages of 10 and 14 living in a peri-urban community outside of Maputo. The first part outlines the importance of engaging girls through participatory methodologies (such as photo-voice) in expressing themselves, their challenges and strengths. Such methodologies can enable researchers to more clearly hear (and see) the voices of the girls and their creativity in addressing the complex issues they face on a daily basis (Moletsane et al., 2007; Mitchell et al., 2006). The second part of the article focuses on the idea of "picturing policy" by highlighting two priority areas identified by the girls, water and sanitation, which if addressed collectively and simultaneously by multi-stakeholder groups, could improve the girls' access to a higher quality of life. The article considers the ways that participatory visual methodologies with communities can become a critical component of policy dialogue. (Contains 5 endnotes and 3 figures.)

This article reports on a recent project in which 25 Chinese college students in an English Department of an urban university in China engaged in a series of photovoice workshops. In the context of a youth as cultural producers framework, the project was meant to engage youth in media production. This approach helped not only to expand their vision and experience related to HIV and AIDS, but also to mobilise their engagement in social issues related to HIV and AIDS, and to pave a path to action and social change. The study has implications across a range of areas, including implications for cross-curricular integration (in this case English) of HIV and AIDS in higher education institutions and the issue of "which language" (L1 or L2) and why in studying sexuality education.

In this article, we focus on the use of the visual for reflection in "alternative" pre-service teacher education and, in particular, we address the question: "How and what can we learn about teacher education using the visual?" By way of illustration, we focus on the use of pre-service teachers' photographs in a public exhibition, participatory video documentary production and pre-service teachers' use of photographs in their professional teaching portfolios. The article draws from research done in relation to three alternative pre-service teacher education projects based at McGill University in Canada and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

The partnerships, especially university-community partnerships, that sustain globally networked learning environments often face challenges in mobilizing research to empower local communities to effect change. This article examines these challenges by describing a university-community partnership involving researchers and graduate students in Canada and South Africa, working with a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa in order to "develop" a participatory digital archive of more than 3000 photographs and videos collected from various visual methodology research projects related to HIV and AIDS education. The main purpose of the digital archive was to place "community members as active participants at the centre of data analysis, as opposed to recipients of findings", and to give voice to teachers, learners, health-care workers and parents in identifying the key issues and challenges affecting their lives in the context of HIV/AIDS and their impact on their communities. The article outlines the technical and conceptual issues in developing the partnership as well as the digital archive, such as developing a scanning protocol, producing a metadata schema, choosing the digital archive software and, most importantly, involving community members, in particular teachers, in the processes of coding the visual data and using the archive for HIV and AIDS education and community change. (Contains 4 figures and 6 notes.)

This article explores the use of participatory video in finding solutions to challenges faced by schools and communities in the contexts of poverty and the AIDS pandemic in one rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Locating the analysis within the study of feminist visual culture and the notion of the female gaze, the article focuses on a close reading of the production of a three-minute video produced by women participating in a project involving teachers, learners, community healthcare workers, and parents. We use textual analysis to look at three levels of textuality: the primary text, the production text, and audience text. Working with video offers a critical way to engage more broadly with texts within qualitative research in education, to engage women in examining their everyday lives, and to make visible new possibilities for addressing the problems of AIDS and poverty. (Contains 3 figures and 4 notes.)

This article maps out key features of self-study in teaching and teacher development, particularly in relation to social action. As teacher educator-researchers, we have become increasingly interested in how self-reflexivity in teaching and teacher development can illuminate social and educational challenges that have resonance beyond the self and can inspire context-specific, practitioner-led responses to those challenges. Drawing on creative and participatory approaches to engaging in self-study, we highlight some of the ways in which the personal interconnects with the social and in so doing contributes to taking action. The examples that we use illustrate the use of personal narrative and video documentary, particularly in the context of our work with South African teachers, and point to the potential for ministries and faculties of education to support self-study initiatives as an approach to social action and community development.

In South Africa, the centrality of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS has led to many educational efforts to address it. The particular social values that male teachers hold around gender-based violence have been less examined. By focusing on African male teachers' understandings of gender-based violence, this paper highlights the complex and contested processes through which meaning of violence is made. We argue that without addressing the specific teacher realities the interrogation of unequal gender relations might be inhibited in South African schools. (Contains 3 notes.)

Inclusive education represents a new agenda for educational reform that spans a wide range of socio-political, cultural, ethical, personal and interpersonal dimensions. Working towards educational inclusion demands commitments, responsibilities and initiatives on the part of all parties to take into consideration the meanings and purpose of education and social justice, to engage and take collective actions in their struggle to combat the diverse forms of educational and social exclusion. This paper presents an educational initiative to implement inclusive education in rural KwaZulu-Natal, an area of South Africa that is most seriously affected by the pandemic of HIV and AIDS. Through the implementation of participatory video-making projects in two schools, the authors seek to empower the voices and actions of teachers in an effort to cope with the problems of poverty and marginalization facing many children. The outcomes of this type of participatory work with teachers have implications for the policy-making process, which in turn, could change the ways educational policy research is structured and implemented.

This paper focuses specifically on the needs and concerns of "very young adolescents" who as defined by the Population Council are young people aged between 10 and 14 years. The title of this paper, "Where Do We Start?", acknowledges that attitudes towards and knowledge of HIV and AIDS are best looked at in a situated way. We look at classes of sixth-grade students from four quite different cultural contexts within the province of KwaZulu-Natal: a deeply rural school made up of black students; a township school again made up exclusively of black students; and two more urban and affluent schools, one a public school made up primarily of white and Indian students, and one faith-based school which, while made up of various racial and ethnic groups, is predominantly white. The paper maps out ways of using arts-based approaches with young people so that they are positioned in engaging and participatory ways. It is argued that "one size does not fit all" when it comes to planning HIV and AIDS interventions. (Contains 3 notes and 5 figures.)

This paper focuses on youth voices about sex and AIDS and reveals significant discrepancies between the "ideal adult worldview" and the "practical youth worldview" on sexual matters. In discussing the 'youth worldview', it draws on Piaget's theories of childhood development and Perry's theory of student development, both theories which postulate that children cannot learn material if they have not reached a particular level of development. It concludes that life skills implementation is the key issue to HIV prevention among young people. It is argued that such a programme should take the rights-based approach in order to get a firm grip of actual sexual practices among youth. It is further argued that this is only possible where there is maximum youth engagement--and this can be achieved through role modelling and the use of visual and arts-based participatory methodologies. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper takes up the concern that sexual health programs targeting adolescents may actually increase HIV risk among youth by reinforcing dominant versions of masculinity that portray males as sexually irresponsible and unconcerned about their health. If a key aim in HIV prevention education is a renegotiation of high-risk behavioral norms, an important consideration is the ways young people resist stereotypical gender norms that can lead to risky sexual practices. From this perspective, opening up spaces for the expression of counter-hegemonic masculinities may be an important health prevention strategy. In a study conducted in three urban Toronto high schools, we explore the ways students in mixed-sex groups supported or challenged dominant discourses of masculinity expressed through three themes: notions of male sexuality as unrestrained and unrestrainable; narrow definitions of sex; and concepts of "risk" and resistance to condom use. We argue that designing HIV prevention programs that "begin" with the exploration of alternative masculinities may be one way to fashion a framework for gender relations that can offer youth more effective prevention strategies. (Contains 3 notes.)

In this article, we draw on the example of the Friday Absenteeism Project, a photo voice project with sixth grade learners in a rural KwaZulu-Natal school, to interrogate the nature of participatory process and cultural production. In so doing, we explore a number of critical issues related to youth participation, including ethics, citizenship and democracy, false promises, life skills and youth participation, links to media, edutainment, art and social change, participation, and taking action. (Contains 5 figures and 4 notes.)

We are concerned with the ways in which social constructions of age can contribute to reducing or exacerbating the vulnerability of young people, and for this reason we refer to the issue as one of "the politics of innocence". The focus of this paper is on gender, youth and HIV prevention/AIDS awareness in the context of South Africa and investigates the uses (and abuses) of images of "childhood", "youth" and "adolescence" in the age of AIDS. Notwithstanding the particular case of South Africa where the incidence of new cases of HIV infection amongst young people is at crisis proportions, the impetus for our work on the visual representations of youth, gender and AIDS comes out of a recognition of the increasing risk of youth to sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, and within that the particular vulnerability, worldwide, of young women. (Contains 3 figures and 8 notes.)

Based on a panel at the 10th World Congress of Comparative Education Societies, this paper discusses how an initiative to promote girls' education in Zambia has influenced policy development to the point where the Zambian Ministry of Education now has clear directives on girls' education. Analyzes some of the important factors contributing to this outcome. Contains 21 references. (VWC)

Asserts that student writers, teachers, and teacher educators must learn to "make do" with the time and circumstances they have in order to develop and grow. (MM)