European Policy on School-based Health Education and Educational Purposes: A Match Made in Heaven or A World Apart?

Author(s):

Monica Carlsson(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

08. Research on Health Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

08 SES 13 A, Policy Regimes and Windows of Possibilities

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

11:00-12:30

Room:

108.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Deana Leahy

Contribution

The growing body of European health promotion policies and programmes targeting schools can be seen in the context of the EU Commission’s agreement to develop flexible governance tools, characterized as “soft law” tools (Moos 2009). It doesn’t mean that we have a homogeneous understanding - differences in understandings of policy and programmes between countries and regions is accentuated in research (Carlsson and Simovska 2012; Simovska 2008). Policy is concerned with authority (the implication that there is official endorsement); expertise (applied to a problem area and identifying what should be done about it); and order (decisions are not taken arbitrary, and decisions are targeting action) (Green and Tones 2010). International organizations such as World Health Organization (WHO), Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) and International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) play a major role in the development of documents that can be characterized as policy, delineating key values and principles in school-based health education and health promotion (SHEHP). Health promotion programmes can also be understood as part of the governance in SHEHP, offering a certain choice of goals, content and means to achieve health in schools, and a substitute for policy in contexts where there isn´t a national official endorsement (Bergh and Englund 2014). Most health promotion programmes offered to schools seem to fall under a prevention label, focusing on risk-factors in health, and not on the broader aim of promoting democracy and wellbeing, a pursuit in which teachers are given a prominent role (Bergh and Englund 2014; Jourdan 2011). This opens up questions on if these are at all appropriate in relational to key educational purposes of schools.

Against this background, the aim of this study is to identify key conceptualizations of values and principles for practice in SHEHP policy and programmes, and to explore their different views in relation to key educational purposes described in educational theory. The following research questions guide the analysis: Which conceptualizations of values and principles for practice can be identified in the sources? What is in focus and what is underplayed in the conceptualizations in relation to key educational purposes in schools?

The analysis will focus on conceptualizations of values and principles in relation to the central concepts of children and young people’s competence and participation. Conceptualizations of competencies tend to focus on qualification purposes of education (e.g. learning certain skills), and forget about the wider purpose of education, i.e. questions concerning ‘what schools are for’ (Biesta 2010a.; Schwandt 2003), while the concept of participation often point toward broader aspects of education, referring to social and personal development aspects. Biesta (2010b.) makes a distinction between three key educational purposes in schools: Qualification includes knowledge, skills, understanding, dispositions and judgments that allow children to ‘do something’; Socialization inserts individuals in existing (social, cultural and political) ‘orders’ of doing and being, (norms and values e.g. justifications of democratic processes); Subjectification offers ways of becoming a subject and ways of being that hint at independence from existing orders (e.g. critical thinking and autonomy). These three purposes will function as analytical categories in the review of what is in focus and what is underplayed in the conceptualizations. It doesn’t imply that these specify universal measures of what education should be, but that education generally performs these three functions in schools (Biesta 2010b.). Understandings of educational purposes are contextually bounded and contingent, i.e. will be understood and manifested in different ways in different cultural contexts, colored by understandings of the schools role in the society, and the development of governance within the public sphere (Carlsson 2011).

Method

The study is based on a conceptual synthesis of conceptualizations on values and principles in European SHEHP policy and programmes. A web search was performed on the webpages of three central organizations, and five policy documents - charters, agendas and protocols, guidelines and thematic resources, from the period 1984-2014 was included (WHO 1986, 2002; SHE n.d., IUHPE 2009, 2012). European health promotion programmes were identified through a search on the webpage http://hepcom.eu/en/the-project/eu-related-projects, and three sources with conceptualization traits similar to the policy sources – i.e. delineating and detailing core values and strategies in school health promotion - were selected for inclusion in the synthesis: YOUNG MINDS (2000-2004); HEPS (2008-2011); and HEALTHY CHILDREN (2008-2013). The conceptual synthesis methodology is focusing on identifying key conceptualizations, ideas and models in the field (Nutley, Davies and Walter 2002). The analysis is based on iterative steps of identifying, interpreting, mapping and reviewing convergence/divergence patterns in conceptualizations offered in the sources. A table provides an overview of the conceptualizations of core values and strategies used in the eight sources, and on how these have been interpreted and synthesized in a proposed delineation of core values and principles within and across the two types of sources. The study sets out with a review of policy studies within education, which will contribute to the analytical framework for the synthesis of conceptualizations in the policy and programme documents, and to the discussion of the findings from the synthesis. Bacchi points out that education policy and health policy both can be seen as the solution to a swathe of social problems. She offers an analytical approach to policy analysis focusing on: ‘What’s the problem represented to be in a specific policy?’, and ‘What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the ‘problem’?’ (Bacchi 2009: 48). A similar approach is offered in a study of value premises in Promotion and Prevention programmes in Swedish schools. The study demonstrated how differences in conceptualizations in educational and health policy, can be understood as fundamental disagreements over ways of solving social problems (Bergh and Englund 2014). An analysis of the use of competence and participation concepts in Norwegian and Danish policy illustrated how authorities within different political areas conceptualized these in different ways, contextualized as both overall welfare-state political problems, and as problems addressed in administrative and action-oriented regulations for specific sectors and professional groups (Ljungdahl 2013).

Expected Outcomes

The analytical framework, based on the findings from the review of policy studies in the field, and the conceptual synthesis based on the policy sources, will be in focus at the presentation of the paper at the conference. Preliminary findings from the review of policy studies is that they emphaizise the need for understanding policy and programs in a wider social context than the policy and programmes themselves, suggesting the following analytical perspectives: using the context of the welfare state as a lakmus paper in analysis of competence and participation concepts, focus on how internationally influenced policy takes shape in relation to national and local educational contexts, and on cross-cultural comparisions of problemrepresentations over time to draw out what is left out or underplayed in coneptualizations. The preliminary findings from the analysis of conceptualizations in the policy sources indicate: that these focus on qualification purposes in education, and on specific qualification aspects such as knowledge and skills; that socialization purposes of education based on core values, e.g. democracy, are underplayed, and that subjectification purposes emphasizing, e.g. autonomy, are underplayed. These findings correspond with previous findings from an analysis of an IUHPE competency framework for health promotion (Carlsson 2015), and an analysis of conceptualizations of professional competencies in SHEHP literature (Carlsson n.d.).

References

Bacchi C (2009) Analysing policy: Whatʼs the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest. Bergh A & Englund, T (2014) A changed language of education with new actors and solutions: the authorization of promotion and prevention programmes in Swedish schools. Journal of Curriculum Studies Volume 46, Issue 6: 778-797 Biesta G (2010a.) Why ‘what works’ still won’t work. From evidence-based education to value-based education. Studies in Philosophy and Education 29(5), 491-503. Biesta G (2010b.) Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, Politics and Democarcy. Paradigm Publishers: London. Carlsson M (2011) Action competence and democratic formation. Dahl K, Læssøe J & Simovska V (eds.) Essays on democratic formation, didaktik and action competence. DUE Publ., Cph. Carlsson M & Simovska V (2012) Exploring learning outcomes of school-based health promotion – a multiple case study. Health Educ. Res. 27 (3): 437-447. Carlsson, M. (2015) Professional competences in school health promotion – between standards and professional practice. In: Simovska, V. & McNamara P. (eds.) Schools for Health and Sustainability - Theory, Research and Practice. Springer, Dordrecht. International Union for Health Promotion and Education (2009) Achieving health promoting schools. Guidelines for promoting health in schools. Paris, IUHPE. International Union for Health Promotion and Education (2012) Facilitating Dialogue between the Health and Education Sectors to advance School Health Promotion and Education. Paris, IUHPE. Jourdan D (2011) Health education in schools. The challenge of teacher training. Saint-Denis: Inpes. Ljungdahl AK (2012) Mapping and reviewing concepts of children’s and young people’s competence, participation and competence-development. Lillehammer University College. Moos L (2009) A general context for new social technologies. In: Nordisk Pedagogik, Vol. 29, pp79-92. Nutley SM, Davies HTO & Walter I (2002) What is a conceptual synthesis? University of St Andrews, Research Unit for Research Utilisation, 5pp. Schools for health in Europe (n.d.) SHE values and pillars. Simovska V (2008) Learning in and as participation. Read A, Jensen BB, Nikel J & Simovska V (eds.) Participation and learning perspectives in education and environment, health and sustainability. New York: Springer. Schwandt TA (2003) Linking evaluation and education: Enlightenment and engagement. I: Haug P & Schwandt TA (eds.). Evaluating Educational Reforms. Scandinavian Perspectives, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing, s. 169-188. Word Health Organization (1986) The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. Geneve: WHO. World Health Organization (2002) The Egmond Agenda. A tool to help establish and develop health promotion in schools and related sectors across Europe. ENHPS Technical Secretariat, Copenhagen.

Author Information

Monica Carlsson (presenting / submitting)

Aarhus University

Danish School of Education

Copenhagen

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