Integrating Health Education In The School Curriculum – Findings From A Primary School Intervention

Author(s):

Maria Bruselius-Jensen(presenting / submitting)Ane Bunde

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

08. Research on Health Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

08 SES 04 B, Integrating Health and Sexuality Education in the Curriculum

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

09:00-10:30

Room:

B102 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Patricia Mannix McNamara

Contribution

This presentation discusses the possibilities and limitations of integrating health education on physical activity into the math curriculum of primary school.

During the last decades much attention has been made, both in politics and in research, to promote healthy lifestyles in children and young people through school health promotion (Barnekow et al., 2006). However, in novel research on Danish schools Nordin (2013) concludes that schools rarely apply health promoting activities beyond physical education lessons and home economics. This does not apply with the health educational goal to provide pupils with the opportunity to acquire information and skills needed to make quality health decisions. This broader notion of health education is also part of the Danish curriculum, but have not been assigned time in the schedule. It must therefore be integrated into the teaching on other subjects. Tones (2005) underlines the pertinent need for school health promotion to be in line with the curriculum as the curriculum represent the whole school experience and alliances with community and society.. This point to a need to study how health education can be integrated into the school curriculum. According to Zeyer (2012), very little research have been made on integrating science and health education, however, he points to several possible educational gains by doing so.

This presentation presents the findings from an educational intervention with the aim to integrate health education on physical activity with teaching about statistics in math. The presentation will focus on how the teachers in the intervention dealt with the integration of the two subjects. It will be discussed how this affected pupils participation and learning processes. Conclusively, possibilities and limitations of integrating health education into the existing curriculum in primary schools will be discussed, and consequences for future health promotion identified.

Method

12 school classes (4 5.grade classes, 4 6.grade classes and 4 7.grade classes) distributed on four Danish public schools in the City of Copenhagen participated in the intervention during the fall and winter of 2013-2014. All school were recruited by the City of Copenhagen. Participation was optional for the schools. Teachers selected the participating classes. The educational approach has been tested in an earlier version (Bruselius-Jensen et al. in review). In this study the approach was tested in larger scale and with minimal researcher involvement, in order to test the feasibility of the approach as a teaching material. The aim was to develop a health educational model that: • Support pupils’ insights into their own levels of physical activity and how a physical active life is built in daily life. • Support pupils abilities to make and use statistics • Has a high pupil participation level • Can be managed by teachers and pupils without researcher assistance • Is in line with the educational policies, and can be integrated into the school curriculum and comply with the educational goals of health education and mathematics. The intervention period spans over two school weeks. First week pupils count their steps during five school days, using step counters. The second week pupils analyse their step data during 5 math lessons, based on a predefined math and health education assignment. The assignment was developed in cooperation with teachers and consists of 6 subjects; 1) Individual step patterns, 2) class based step patterns, 3) do I/we walk as much as recommended, 4) gender differences in step patterns, 5) comparison to step patterns of pupils in Nairobi, Kenya, and 6) estimation of out of school step patterns. All subjects are dealt with by drawing graphs, finding mathematic characteristics in the data and discussing how these characteristics demonstrates the structure and social issues of being active in school. Hence, the assignment include arithmetic (dealing with data), mathematic (understanding how numbers represent practice) and health education (promoting insight into how physical activity is formed through everyday life). All pupils did their calculations and wrote their answers in hand outs. All lessons were recorded and observed by researchers. All class based discussions during lessons were transcribed. The analysis in the paper is based on observation notes, transcriptions of sound recordings and the written assignments from the pupils.

Expected Outcomes

The findings demonstrate that the education material in the intervention was used with great diversity by the different teachers. All teachers have placed much effort on developing the arithmetic skills of doing calculations and drawing graphs. Less attention was given to teaching the mathematic skills of grasping how mathematics work and what numbers represent. Finally, there was great differences in how much class based dialogs have been prioritized. In some classes there were nearly no dialog about the patterns of physical activity, and in other classes the majority of the lessons were used on class based discussions. Furthermore, written assignments, as well as observations from the class room, show that pupils, who were engaged in discussions, displayed much more elaborated understandings of how their patterns of physical activity are constructed. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that pupils engaged in discussions, developed both their arithmetic, as well as mathematical skills, more during the intervention, than those in classes were calculations were prioritised. The findings indicate that integrating health education into the curriculum of math, does not always work, as the primary subject takes most attention in the teaching. However, the findings also indicate that, when integrated as intended, integration produce good learning outcomes on both math and health education. Furthermore, the integration seems to promote learning that connects theory and practice.

References

Barnekow, V., Buijs, G., Clift, S., Jensen, B.B., Paulus, P., Rivett, D. & Young, I. (2006). Health-promoting schools: A resource for developing indicators. Copenhagen: WHO/Europe Bruselius-Jensen et al. (Submitted). Pedometers and participatory school-based health education, Journal of Health Education Tones, Keith (2005): Health Promotion in Schools: The Radical Imperative, In; Clift, Stephen and Jensen, Bjarne Bruun (Ed.)(2006) The Health Promoting School: International advances in Theory, Evaluation and Practice, Danish University of Education Press, Copenhagen. Pp. 23-41 Nordin, Lone Lindegard (2013). Fra politik til praksis: Implementering af kommunale sundhedsfremmeprojekter med fokus på kost og fysisk aktivitet fra et lærerperspektiv. [From politics to practice: Implementing municipal health promotion projects with a focus on diet and physical activity from a teacher perspective], disertation, Århus University Zeyer, A. (2012). A win-win situation for health and science education: Seeing through the lens of a new framework model of health literacy. In A. Zeyer & R. Kyburz-Graber (Eds.), Science|Environment|Health. Towards a renewed pedagogy for science education. Dordrecht: Springer. Pp. 147-175

Author Information

Maria Bruselius-Jensen (presenting / submitting)

Steno Diabetes Center

Steno Health Promotion Center

Gentofte

Ane Bunde

Steno Diabetes Center, Denmark

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