Jean Stuart

Giving a face to HIV and AIDS: on the uses of photo-voice by teachers and community health care workers working with youth in rural South Africa

This paper focuses on an ongoing project in rural South Africa involving teachers and community health workers addressing their work with youth and HIV and AIDS. It outlines a photo-voice component of the project, highlighting in particular the design features of setting up such a project, and in particular addresses five emerging issues in visual methodologies: technical concerns, interpretation, ethical concerns, documentation and taking action. The paper concludes by looking at the ways in which the kind of reflexivity afforded by visual methodologies can help to make visible a plan of action for change. In a province of South Africa that is at the epicentre of the pandemic, this is vital.

Drawings as Research Method

The use of drawings in social research is located within several broad yet overlapping areas of contemporary study. These include arts-based or artsinformed research (Knowles & Cole, 2008), participatory visual methodologies (De Lange, Mitchell, & Stuart, 2007; Rose, 2001), textual approaches in visual studies in the social sciences (Mitchell, 2011), as well as the use of drawings in psychology.

Photo-voice as a tool for analysis and activism in response to HIV and AIDS stigmatisation in a rural KwaZulu-Natal school.

Objective: This paper focuses on the use of participatory approaches to research and intervention and explores the uses of photo-voice as a methodology and a means of promoting childhood and youth activism in the context of HIV and AIDS. Method: Photo-voice, a visual participatory methodology, was used with 21 Grade 8 and 9 learners in one of three schools participating in a larger project, to identify, understand and interpret incidents related to stigma and discrimination against people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS, as well as the strategies proposed by the learners to possibly reduce stigma. Results: Three themes emerged: awareness of HIV and AIDS, awareness of HIV-related stigma and its impacts, and acceptance of personal agency and taking action. Conclusions: Understandings of and perceptions about HIV and AIDS are improving, yet significant pockets of ignorance about the dynamics of HIV infection still remain among the youth. Negative attitudes towards people infected with and affected by the virus remain, and stigmatisation continues. The use of photo-voice and other participatory methodologies offers alternative strategies for involving youth in their own knowledge production, as well as in the development of an individual sense of agency for taking action.

What can a woman do with a camera? Turning the female gaze on poverty and HIV and AIDS in rural South Africa

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.

Youth voices about sex and AIDS: implications for life skills education through the ‘Learning Together’ project in KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa

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.

Learning about Co-Flexivity in a Transdisciplinary Self-Study Research Supervision Community

In South Africa, every postgraduate (master’s or doctoral) student is usually assigned one academic advisor, known as a supervisor. “The traditional model is the apprenticeship model of individual mentoring. This model is usually supplemented by informal and ad hoc support programmes” (Academy of Science of South Africa [ASSAf], 2010, p. 64).

A Positive, African Ethical Approach to Collecting and Interpreting Drawings

All research is regulated by ethical principles that try to ensure that research participants are not harmed in any way by their participation in a research project. Universities and research bodies typically have robust ethical procedures and ethical codes that try to guarantee that researchers do ethical research.