Philipsburg- In preparation for the HIV/AIDS Education Policy that will be included in the island's school curriculum, a workshop on Curriculum Development and Curriculum Engineering was held last week for members of the HIV/AIDS Education Policy Workgroup and for teachers of each cycle of our primary and secondary schools that are engaged in curriculum development.The facilitator for both workshops was Mr. Salorne McDonald, a Behavior Change Communications Specialist with a degree in education and specialization in curriculum development.
The need for an HIV/AIDS Education Policy came out of the 2007-2011 HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan. It was realized that in order to target all school going children (including younger children), a special curriculum was needed for both elementary and secondary schools to teach children about HIV/AIDS and sexual reproductive health. Seeing that there were limitations in the current education system a decision was made, with the support of the Commissioner of Education and the management and school boards of most of the islands schools, to embark on a process of developing a policy.
The process being used is an all-inclusive one, so questionnaires were developed to collect data/input from all stakeholders in the education sector: management, teachers, students and parents.
During the workshops attendees were given the various factors that impact curriculum design, such as, how will learning be facilitated, supported and structured; how will students learn; what is the scope and level of learning which is to be achieved amongst others. Mr. McDonald also brought forward to the attendees the learning process, which must be a dynamic process of empowering the learner to learn; as well as facilitating the learning as a process of identifying, challenging and changing beliefs if need be. Additional learning processes were presented as a tool to the attendees for further curriculum development.
The role of education in HIV/AIDS along with issues to address in prevention was also discussed during the workshop.
The next step now will be to conduct another workshop with teachers who were unable to attend the workshop due to the passing of Hurricane Omar. Following this, Mr. McDonald will begin writing the curriculum outline, which will be reviewed by local stakeholders and further developed before finalization.
According to Suzette Moses-Burton, HIV/AIDS Programme Manager, "This is a very exciting process that we have embarked upon and I am looking forward to the positive changes that will be realized. The process is taking much longer than we originally envisioned, but the data that we have been able to collect to date and the knowledge that we are all acquiring will benefit our community tremendously in the long run and will make a significant impact in our HIV/AIDS response on Sint Maarten."
As the process continues more information will be made available to the general public and particularly parents who will also be specifically targeted for their contribution to the process.
