Contextual Influences of Substance Abuse Problems among School Children

Tlale, Lloyd Daniel Nkoli; Dreyer, Sarah E.

doi:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p361

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Transactional sex (Potgieter, Strebel, Shefer, & Wagner, 2012) in these contexts is at times a conscious choice by some girls to generate an income (Ibebuike et al, 2014). Teenage pregnancy may also be fuelled by boredom (Miller et al, 2014), alcohol, and other substance use (Davis & Steslow, 2014;Tlale & Dreyer, 2013) in under-resourced communities where few other leisure options exist. This reality places these adolescents at greater risk for HIV infection in a population where the estimated HIV prevalence among antenatal clinic attendees in 2010 was already 14% for girls aged 15-19 years in South Africa (Blignaut, Vergnani, & Jacobs, 2014) and is steadily rising in periurban contexts.…”

Section: Figure 3: Fabric Collage Of the Three Prioritised Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inequitable access to resources (Bruce, 2014;Spaull, 2013) and sectored poverty (Donald, Lazarus, & Lolwana, 2010) continue to play a role in contributing to the psychosocial challenges faced in South African under-resourced communities, which consequently affect the wellness of members of the school community in that context (Donald et al, 2010). Contextual challenges relevant to this article include poor living conditions in informal settlements with little access to basic amenities (Donald et al, 2010), poor parenting (Ward et al, 2014), poverty-related HIV/AIDS issues (Theron, 2009), socioeconomic influences on teenage sexuality (Miller et al, 2014), substance abuse (Tlale & Dreyer, 2013), school violence (Mampane, Ebersöhn, Cherrington, & Moen, 2014), and poor parent participation within school structures (Joubert, Ebersöhn, Ferreira, du Plessis, & Moen 2014;Khanare, 2012;Mncube, 2009). South African school teachers are inadequately prepared to support learners within such contexts (Masitsa, 2011;Motshekga, 2010), having only received very basic concepts of educational psychology and community development as part of their preservice training (Donald et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collaborated understandings of context-specific psychosocial challenges facing South African school learners: a participatory approach

Setlhare

Wood

Meyer

2016

Educ. res. soc. change.

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South African teachers are not sufficiently equipped to address psychosocial challenges that they encounter in under-resourced contexts among learners at school, and which impact negatively on learning and teaching. In this article, we report on the first cycle of a community-based participatory action research project undertaken with teacher participants to facilitate a collaborative understanding of the contextual psychosocial challenges that learners face. The aim of the study was to equip teachers with sustainable capacity to conduct a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) enquiry that would enhance their ability to identify and address contextual psychosocial challenges to promote wellness. Following a PALAR design, we collaborated with 10 volunteer teachers for the generation of qualitative data through relationship building activities, individual interviews, the creation of visual artefacts, and informal group discussions. Data were analysed thematically in collaboration with the community of participants. Findings suggest that the process assisted the teachers to gain a deeper understanding of learners' psychosocial challenges, encouraged a sense of group identity among coresearchers, and fostered their agency to begin to address the identified challenges and to network with community stakeholders to promote wellness among themselves and among learners.

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