Shades of the (Post)Critical: Perspectives on Critique within Recent Research on Health and Wellbeing Education
Author(s):
Nis Langer Primdahl (presenting / submitting) Alan Reid Venka Simovska
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
08. Research on Health Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

08 SES 05, Purposes of Health Education: Framings in and beyond curriculum

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
13:30-15:00
Room:
K3.24
Chair:
Deana Leahy

Contribution

With this paper we aim to discuss the ways in which different critical perspectives present themselves within the context of curriculum studies. The focus is on curriculum research focused on health and wellbeing as it has been represented within a specific journal, Journal of Curriculum Studies. The journal has been chosen because of its aims and scope, namely, to publish studies that encompass the links between social and institutional aspects of education and curriculum development and enactment (Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2015). Our guiding questions include: a) how current critical themes within health education and the attempts to conceptualize links between health and wellbeing in school context can be viewed within a framework that depicts different aspects of critique; b) how various shades of the critical cast particular light on this specific field of focus; c) what are the implications, the consequences, and the prospects for future research?

Over the last decade health and wellbeing have been increasingly pointed to as issues the school curricula should emphasize. Across the many forms and shapes of school-based health and wellbeing education various aspects of a critical perspective come to light, with different rationales. For example, the paradigm of Health Promoting Schools (HPS) emphasizes that a socioecological and action-oriented approach to health education might enhance cross-disciplinarity and increase schools’ and pupils’ capacity for participation in democratic processes and real-life health problems in the community (Simovska & McNamara, 2015; Simovska & Prøsch 2016). Further, the concept of 21st century competencies includes education within health/wellbeing, citizenship, sustainability, and moral education (Voogt & Roblin, 2012) while the EU’s strategy Europe 2020 points to health literacy as among the necessary competencies for our ever changing and global society. Finally, within the context of educational reforms internationally, there seems to be a political consensus that wellbeing should be one of the prioritized aims for schools along with academic attainment based on evidence that wellbeing and learning are deeply interconnected (World Health Organization, 2016).

Our theoretical framework is based on a preliminary analytical distinction between critical approaches oriented towards the transcendental and approaches oriented towards deconstruction (Biesta & Stams 2001). These different forms of criticalities refer to the kinds of ideals any given critical perspective should fulfil (Davies 2014). The first form of criticality is based on the assumption that the attainment of knowledge of transcendental structures of various kinds is desirable and is in fact possible (Habermas 1971; Habermas 1980; Ricoeur 1977). The latter is based on the exact opposite assumption, namely the impossibility of essential or transcendental truths beneath apparent structures (Hart 2014).

Although the two critical paradigms in theory might appear mutually exclusive, we hypothesise that both forms of critique are present simultaneously in a majority of the selected articles. However, we argue that a more nuanced elucidation is needed on what is meant by “critical” within critical health education studies. The paper aspires to explore an argument in support of transcending the rigidity of reductive schisms based on a modern-postmodern dichotomy by examining how both transcendental and deconstructive aspects are present side-by-side within the selected papers.

Method

The study is based on critical literature search and review techniques (Cherryholmes, 1993; Poulson & Wallace, 2004; Alvesson & Sandberg, 2014) which emphasize the importance of not simply looking for gaps in research, areas of neglect, or new possibilities for theory application, but rather foster research that ‘challenges assumptions’. By this, Alvesson & Sandberg, for example, recommend applying a set of review activities that critically scrutinise dominating assumptions and, when motivated, suggest alternative ones, as well as find and solve ‘a mystery’ in empirical studies.
 In this instance, we operationalized these goals by conducting a search for the terms ‘health’ and ‘well-being’ in the journal database. The articles where the terms featured figuratively and thus where not tied to human beings, were screened from the database, e.g. when the term “health” was used to describe the idea of a healthy deliberative democracy, and thus referred to cultural diversity and interaction. The initial search generated a possible collection of 285 articles where either term or both terms were present in a meaningful and significant way (i.e. for the purposes of this study). Following a closer reading this pool was narrowed down to those articles that could also be categorized as relating to forms of the “critical” as outlined above. This led to a final collection of 15 articles to be analyzed in depth. We then asked critical reading questions focused on what was presented and understood by “critical” in each article, to clarify how the notion is articulated and represented in the various definitions and operationalizations of concepts, analyses and discussions, alongside how consistent, rigorous and innovative these were. The outcomes of this stage led us to identify those articles taking a critical approach to health and wellbeing education in terms of the following key themes: (a) health-related action competence as a learning outcome; (b) physical activity education beyond the physical; (c) critical (pupils) voices; (d) teacher agency and curriculum enactment; and (e) promotion of health through critical literacy. A common denominator for all papers was that they challenged the traditional health education approach focused on propositional curriculum knowledge and behaviour regulation related to health and wellbeing. (The presentation will illustrate these themes and subthemes, and how they help scrutinise dominating assumptions, e.g. the meaningfulness and appropriateness of in-house assumptions and root metaphors, and dialectical interrogating familiar positions and alternative assumptions for the researchers and audience of such curriculum studies.)

Expected Outcomes

Although it is possible to place the papers within either the transcendental or deconstructivist categories of criticality as the dominating perspective, our analysis shows that a multitude of critical perspectives transcending these distinctions is present in each of the articles - hence our reference to the notion of shades. Thus, rather than portraying an article as subscribing exclusively to a transcendental or deconstructivist perspective, we argue that the distinction is most useful as an orienting framework for categorizing a particular object of critique within each article (Brown, 2005). Yet taken together, the points of critique of different objects in the articles are seen as assembled in more complex and entangled ways in the discourses (re)presented by the papers, i.e. as elements of the same yet dynamic set of phenomena, rather than being binaries derived from brute logic. Thus their authors and readers can also regard them as generative and incomplete rather than saturated and closed as approaches or assumptions about criticality. As Alvesson and Sandberg (2014, 32) write: “As we see it, the interplay between theory and empirical material is more about seeing the latter as a source of inspiration and a partner for critical dialogue than as a guide and ultimate arbitrator.” Thus, on the one hand, terms such as “action competence” as well as “critical” in the study of health education curriculum may help theorize but also regulate and rationalize processes to change pupils. On the other, their cultural assumptions speak of not only what a child is, but practices of governing what a child should, or could, become. In summary, when how a field of study is presented is also questioned, e.g. by resisting simplistic ‘readings off’ of their realities, agency and resistance become possible, including through opening up other forms than those defined by existing frameworks.

References

Alvesson, M, & Sandberg J. (2014.) “Problematization meets Mystery Creation: Generating new Ideas and Findings through Assumption Challenging Research.” In E. Jeanes & T. Huzzard (eds) Critical Management Research: Reflections from the Field, , 23–41. London: Sage. Biesta, G. J. J., & Stams, G. J. J. M. (2001). Critical Thinking and the Question of Critique: Some Lessons from Deconstruction. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 20(1), 57–74. Brown, W. (2005) Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton University Press. [Chapter 1, Untimeliness and Punctuality: Critical Theory in Dark Times, pp. 1-16.] Cherryholmes, C. H. (1993). “Reading Research.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 25 (1): 1–32.
 Davies, B. (2014). Legitimation in Post-critical, Post-realist Times, or Whether Legitimation? In A. D. Reid, E. P. Hart, & M. A. Peters (Eds.), A Companion to Research in Education (pp. 443–450). Springer Netherlands. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. Hart, P. (2014). Questions of Legitimacy and Quality in Educational Research. In A. D. Reid, E. P. Hart, & M. A. Peters (Eds.), A Companion to Research in Education (pp. 363–374). Springer Netherlands. Journal of Curriculum Studies (2015). Aims and scope Retrieved January 17, 2017, from http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tcus20 Popkewitz, T. S. (2009). Curriculum study, curriculum history, and curriculum theory: the reason of reason. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(3), 301–319. Poulson, L, & Wallace, M., (eds). (2004). Learning to Read Critically in Teaching and Learning. London: Sage.
 Reid, A. (2016). ‘Researchers are experienced readers’: on recognition, aspiration and obligation, Environmental Education Research, 22:3, 422-431. Ricoeur, P. (1977). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. (D. Savage, Trans.) Yale University Press. Simovska, V., & McNamara, P. M. (Eds.). (2015). Schools for health and sustainability: theory, research and practice. New York: Springer. Simovska, V., & Prøsch, Å. K. (2016). Global social issues in the curriculum: perspectives of school principals. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(5), 630–649. Voogt, J., & Roblin, N. P. (2012). A comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: Implications for national curriculum policies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(3), 299–321. World Health Organization (2016). Growing up unequal: gender and socioeconomic differences in young people’s health and well-being : Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study : international report from the 2013/2014 survey.

Author Information

Nis Langer Primdahl (presenting / submitting)
Aarhus University
Education Science
Copenhagen
Alan Reid
Monash University, Australia
Venka Simovska
Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Copenhagen
Copenhagen

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