Does cultural economics affect country’s competitiveness?

Abstract

The study investigated the awareness of the consequences of HIV/AIDS and its implications for curriculum development in Nigerian secondary schools. Three research questions and a hypothesis guided the study. The design adopted for this study was analytical survey research design. The population of the study comprised 129,000 senior secondary school (II) students and 25,976 teachers from 1,098 public secondary schools in South-East, Nigeria. The sample comprised of 399 SSII students and 394 teachers from 113 public secondary schools, selected through stratified random sampling using multistage cluster sampling procedure. HIV/AIDS Awareness and Education Questionnaire (HAEQ), developed by the researcher was used for data collection. HAEQ was face validated. Face validity was established by three experts. The overall reliability index of 0.93 was obtained for HAEQ using the Cronbach's alpha method whereas. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypothesis was tested using independent t-test at 0.05 level of significances. The findings of this study showed both students and teachers reported that there is a low extent to which secondary school students in Nigeria are aware of the consequences of HIV/AIDS. Also, both students and teachers reported high extent to which the exposure of students to HIV/AIDS education influences their preventive behaviours. More so, the study found that both students and teachers perceive the HIV/AIDS-related content in the Nigerian secondary school curriculum to be inadequate, with no significant difference in their view. These outcomes indicate the need for more comprehensive and effectively integrated HIV/AIDS education within Nigerian secondary schools. On this basis, it was recommended among others that the Federal and State Ministries of Education in Nigeria should strengthen the integration of HIV/AIDS education into the secondary school curriculum by providing more comprehensive and up-to-date content or awareness on the causes, consequences, prevention and management of the disease.

Keyword : Awareness, HIV/AIDS, curriculum development