Implementing Preventive Education about HIV/AIDS through Physical Education in Zambia: The Response of Teachers

Governments, United Nations (UN) agencies and international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have mounted a concerted effort to remobilize sport as a vehicle for broad, sustainable social development. This resonates with the call by the UN Inter-agency Task Force for sport to be a key component in national and international development objectives. Missing in these efforts is an explicit focus on physical education within state schools, which still enroll most children in the global South. This study focuses on research into one of the few instances where physical education within the national curriculum is being revitalized as part of this growing interest in leveraging the appeal of sport and play as a means to address social development challenges such as HIV/AIDS. The study examines the response to the Zambian government’s 2006 Declaration of Mandatory Physical Education (with a preventive education focus on HIV/AIDS) by personnel charged with its implementation. The decree directed personnel to immediately begin implementing the teaching of physical education in all Basic and Secondary schools in Zambia to “ensure physical fitness and the enhancement of values, skills and holistic development of the learner” (Ministry of Education, 2006). The study examined the response of 17 teachers and education administrators from Lusaka province, Zambia. The interviews were conducted between September and December 2009. The purpose of the study was to: 1) evaluate the implementation of the Presidential Decree on physical education as a strategy for addressing HIV/AIDS through Physical Education and Traditional Zambian Games; 2) explore and understand the response of teachers and administrators to the implementation of the 2006 Presidential Decree on physical education; 3) explore how the school context influences the implementation of the Presidential Decree; and 4) map a critical path of key personnel and their resource requirements, and make recommendations for strengthening the effectiveness of HIV prevention education. Drawing on education policy implementation literature, this study provides an analysis of the rising influence of the sport for development movement and of the ways in which physical education and sport may address HIV/AIDS within national education in Zambia. The findings of the study reveal promising signs for the potential of physical education, and of particularly traditional games, for student engagement and for addressing HIV/AIDS. Yet these promising signs are undermined by poor planning and support from the education bureaucracy, deficiencies that stem from years of neglect of, until recently, non-examinable subjects such as physical education. The findings confirm that the literature on education policy implementation drawn mostly from the global North is just as applicable to education sectors in the global South.Ph