Testing Action Media and Entertainment Education with Autistic Children

From the Abstract:

"This paper explores the efficacy of an intervention on HIV/AIDS and sexuality education with autistic children. A number of autistic children are sexually active, without realising the consequences of their actions, and this makes them vulnerable to HIV infection and pregnancy.

This intervention made use of entertainment education strategies, using puppet shows, theatre and music to educate autistic pupils at a school in Durban. The action media approach was used to involve pupils in the creation of the media product, in this case a music CD. This paper details the origins and implementation of the project, as well as it's efficacy."

Conclusion

"According to Paisley (2001), there is an assumption that attitude change is greatest immediately after a message is received. Attitudinal change and memory retention do, however, decay progressively as time elapses. This concept was exemplified in our project, where the children were able to answer questions correctly directly after each activity, however, the summative interviews proved that only a slight increase in knowledge had occurred when compared to the preliminary interviews.

This project reinforced the fact that cerebral palsied children were in dire need of sex education, as many pupils had been exposed to some form of sexual encounter, either with their peers, or with opportunistic adults.

The daunting task, however, is to discover a means of communicating the message effectively, by capturing and maintaining the pupils’ interest and enthusiasm. This is evidently achieved through music. It is evident that the top-down and didactic approaches lead to minimal improvements. Mobilising the cerebral palsied children into a pro-active, participatory approach using action media can counteract this. Central to this approach is the idea of empowering the target group. Cerebral palsied children should not be treated as being incompetent or disadvantaged. They should not be made to feel stupid. Avoiding top-down approaches, where concepts are bombarded at the audience at a rapid pace, or where the communicator has a different background to the audience, resulting in shortsighted methodologies, may solve this problem. These children require a boost to their self-esteem, which will improve their self-efficacy. This can only be achieved through validating their input and increasing their control in the construction of the product, so that they can be knowing subjects, and not just recipients. Furthermore, their participation is vital to the product’s success. Incorporating the pupils into the song allowed them to become part of the communication product. This manifested in the pupils themselves becoming agents of potential behavioural change in their school environment and within their communities.

In this project, music was shown to be an entertaining and effective way to communicate HIV/AIDS and sexuality messages. This project exemplified the fact that music, with its emotive capacity, in combination with action media, is a useful avenue, which needs to be explored further."

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