Knowledge and responsibility regarding teaching teenage girl’s reproductive healthcare: views of Eastern Cape Province teachers

Teachers play a vital role in educating and teaching of children at school. One of the areas for teaching responsibility is development of the individual learner to be a competent community member, either as a professional or as an otherwise- skilled person. It is therefore for that reason that the South African government introduced into the curriculum at school level a subject that is directed at life orientation to empower learners. Teachers bear the responsibility of teaching this subject. One of the topics in the Life Orientation subject is Reproductive Healthcare, which is supposed to empower the learners especially with matters of sex and sexuality, diseases included. Despite the teaching of this topic in schools, the rate of teenage pregnancies and occurrence of sexually -transmitted infections remains on the increase in the country. Although much literature exists about teenage pregnancy in the country, there is theoretical paucity on how teachers view their responsibility to teach reproductive healthcare. The questions that prompted and have been raised in this study have been: How much do school teachers know about reproductive healthcare? How do school teachers view the responsibility given to them of teaching the reproductive healthcare? What kind of assistance is needed by the school teachers with regard to their responsibility towards teaching the reproductive healthcare topic? The objectives developed for the study were to: explore the knowledge of school teachers with regard to reproductive healthcare; explore and describe the views of school teachers with regard to their responsibility to teach the reproductive healthcare topic to teenage girls ;and develop guidelines for schools to assist school teachers with regard to their responsibility to teach the reproductive healthcare topic to teenage girls. Following the granting of the necessary university permission and approval from other relevant authorities, the study was conducted between May and June 2017, using a qualitative explorative, descriptive and contextual design. The research population and sample was school teachers specifically those who were working at public high schools, in the Sarah Baartman and Makana districts and Nelson Mandela Bay Municipal area. Furthermore, the teachers were from schools that were using the Life Orientation curriculum. Sampling was done purposively. Data was collected by means of focus-group semi-structured interviews that were captured by means of a digital voice-recorder and an interview schedule consisting of four questions. The number of participants ranged from four to five per focus group. Field notes were also written down to record non-verbal cues and events observed from the participants during the interview sessions. Altogether twenty teachers participated in this study. From the twenty participants six teachers were part of the pilot study and an additional fourteen were the ultimate sample size. From the fourteen participants four focus -group interviews were conducted. The collected data was analysed following the spiral data -analysis method as indicated by de Vos. As findings, three themes emerged and were the following. Teachers view their responsibility to teach reproductive healthcare to teenage girls as burdensome. Teachers identified the changes to the curriculum as a concern that was affecting their teaching of the topic. Furthermore, the teachers related positively to the need for teaching of the reproductive healthcare topic at schools. Based on these findings and the guidance of the model adopted for the study, that of the Health Promotion Model, three main guidelines were developed. These guidelines will teachers on how best to meet their responsibility of teaching the reproductive topic to teenage girls. The guidelines were to: create a set of core values that form the basis of responsibility to teach reproductive healthcare to teenage girls; devise a plan that will assist participants to deal with the immediate burden of teaching reproductive healthcare but also for future purposes and create an atmosphere that would increase the positivity of teachers towards teaching reproductive healthcare to teenage girls. Furthermore, recommendations for clinical nursing practice, nursing education and nursing research were developed. Trustworthiness of the study was maintained by using the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Ethical principles adopted in this study were those of beneficence, maleficence, justice and respect while applying the strategies of permission, informed consent, privacy, confidentiality and anonymity