School based health education has long been a part of schooling in many countries . One of the key reasons for this is the belief that schools are integral settings whereby governments can endeavour to enhance the health and wellbeing of children and young people (Simovska & Mannix-McNamara, 2014). Within this policy mix, formal health education is thought to provide an important platform whereby children and young people can be educated about health.  While there is without doubt, a significant amount of scholarship that has, over time, sought to examine health education and its role in enhancing children and young people’s health, this scholarship has overwhelmingly been dominated by public health and health promotion perspectives (Fitzpatrick & Tinning, 2014; Leahy, 2014; Wright, 2014). The lack of educational scholarship means there are significant gaps in what we know about the formation of school based health education curriculum, it’s translation and pedagogical enactments. We want to suggest that redressing this balance is crucial if we want to genuinely develop insights into what it means to educate children and young people about health and wellbeing. 

The proposed symposium ‘International perspectives on health education: The critical question of educational research’ is an attempt to place the spotlight on educational research and its contribution to the field of school health education.  The symposium brings together educational research scholars from Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA to consider the politics, policies and practices of school health education.  Together our papers draw from theoretical and empirical research to engage with the following questions:

*  How is health education curriculum shaped in different socio-cultural, political and educational contexts – in Europe and elsewhere? 

* Which discourses of health and well-being are endorsed within school-based health education and health promotion, and how are these related to the core task of the school’s education? 

Fitzpatrick, K., & Tinning, R. (2014). Considering the politics and practice of health education. In: Fitzpatrick, K. and Tinning, R. eds. Health education : Critical perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge, 1- 13. Leahy, D. 2014. Assembling a health [y] subject: risky and shameful pedagogies in health education. Critical Public Health, 24(2), 171-181. Simovska, V., & Mannix-McNamara, P. (2014) (Eds). Schools for health and sustainability: Theory, research and practice. Dodrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Wright, J. 2014. Beyond body fascism: The place for health education. In: Fitzpatrick, K. and Tinning, R. eds. Health education : Critical perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge, 233-248.