(AOC) Safeguarding the Future against HIV/AIDS: Change Agents in Malawi?s Education Sector

Save The Children, Fairfield CT

Investigators

Abstract

In 2005, an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS, 4.9 million were newly infected with HIV and 3.1 million died of AIDS. The impact of the disease has begun to reverse gains made previously in health, economic development and education. In Malawi, a landlocked country in Southern Africa where 14.2 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, primary school teachers struggle to maintain order and quality in classrooms with high numbers of orphans. Children participate in school intermittently and many struggle with special psychological needs from living amidst the epidemic and its effects. Furthermore, the nation's teachers are dying at a rate faster than the education system can train replacements and Malawi is losing its role models. Yet, among the country's beleaguered educators are agents of change who are not daunted by the stigma of having, discussing, or teaching about the disease. They are coping and assisting others to cope in and through the education system. These individuals and groups are "positive deviants" who defy the norm of silence, shame and stigmatization that surrounds the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This interdisciplinary research will adapt positive deviance inquiry (PDI) in two districts of Malawi to (1) identify positive deviant individuals and groups in the education sector who are proactively adapting to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and explore the specific characteristics that make them positive deviants; (2) identify the factors that support those individuals and groups, as well as the barriers they face, in their attempts to catalyze action in the context of a decentralized education sector; and (3) develop recommendations to policymakers and practitioners for supporting positive deviant teachers, school management committees, and others in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The research will entail a three-step process of initial exploration, qualitative inquiry, and quantitative inquiry. Given the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS in Malawi, there is an urgent need to undertake research to help the education sector better understand and manage profound change brought about by the pandemic. The broader impact of the research will be to contribute to an education sector in Malawi that understands how to cope with the challenges presented by HIV/AIDS. The research will enhance the knowledge of Malawian educators and enable both policy and practice to more effectively address the problems HIV/AIDS causes. This project's intellectual merit resides in the fact that it represents the first application of PDI, a well-established public health approach, to HIV/AIDS in the education sector. This new combination advances knowledge and understanding in both the public health and education fields.