AIDS EDUCATION FOR YOUTH THROUGH ACTIVE LEARNING - A SCHOOL-BASED APPROACH FROM MALAWI

Health education programmes need to address local understandings of HI V/AIDS within the broader context of sexual behaviour. We report on a locally derived and community orientated questionnaire survey of HIV/A IDS and sexually related behaviour among 756 pupils from two governmen t secondary schools in Malawi. On average, pupils gave the correct ans wers to more than 70% of the items on the survey. Seventy-two pupils f rom one of the schools subsequently participated in playing an educati onal board game about AIDS, once a week, over four weeks. The percenta ge of correct responses given while playing the board game significant ly increased each time the board game was played, and a one-month foll ow-up questionnaire showed that a significant improvement had been mai ntained in comparison with the initial questionnaire survey. Pupils wh o attended the school where the board game was trialed, but who did no t participate in the board game, scored slightly, but significantly, h igher than pupils from the other 'no-board game' control school. This result was tentatively interpreted as a 'trickle down' effect. The ben efits of introducing active learning methods into schools, of focusing on local understandings of health problems, and of establishing an ac curate knowledge base for health promotion are discussed. Copyright (C ) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd