‘Sick of AIDS’: life, literacy and South African youth

Two years later: preservice teachers' experiences of learning to use participatory visual methods to address the South African AIDS epidemic

“…Shefer, Strebel, & Jacobs (2012) described a culture of AIDS fatigue on university campuses, with students feeling removed and unmotivated to engage in any HIV-and AIDS-related learning. Mitchell and Smith (2003) explained AIDS fatigue as the result of prevention approaches that are disconnected from the lives of young people. The participants I interviewed were overwhelmingly appreciative of the participatory visual approach because it presented new and interesting ways for them, as young people, to construct knowledge about HIV and AIDS.…”

‘I Never Knew that Pictures Could Convey Such Powerful Messages’: Chinese Students in an English Department Explore Visual Constructions of HIV and AIDS

“…We had not expected, for example, that the use of English would be such an important matter for the participants in discussion of the issues. New work in applied linguistics by Higgins and Norton (2009) on HIV and AIDS and language highlights some of the critical issues and questions that link language and culture to HIV and AIDS, and although we have written elsewhere of some of these linkages (see for example Mitchell and Smith 2003, on issues of literacy and meaning-making in relation to HIV and AIDS), the idea of what language or whose language is clearly something that requires further investigation. At the same time, the notion of curriculum integration also requires further study.…”

The (Im)possibility of Child Sexual Rights in South African Children's Account of HIV/AIDS

“…Young children's emerging meanings of HIV/AIDS and sexuality are embedded within the broader context of South African AIDS and the specific social and cultural systems which shape and are important in shaping the structure of experience of sexuality. As HIV/AIDS decimates thousands of people, particularly those in informal settlements, there is increasing openness in sexual speech and overwhelming visibility of sex and HIV/AIDS education and prevention -to such an extent that many have become 'sick of AIDS' (Mitchell and Smith 2003). It is possible to argue quite easily that young children emerging from these social worlds are victims whose rights have not been realised particularly with poor provision of housing and poverty.…”