The purpose of this paper is (1) to describe student teachers’ qualitatively varying ways of understanding how health will be manifested during the classroom-based health education lessons in schools, and (2) to discuss the influences these conceptions have on teacher training. This is important due to the fact that teachers’ ways of seeing something has been found to be associated with their actual teaching practices (e.g. Trigwell & Prosser 1996), i.e. these conceptions shape their personal curricula and instructional practices.

There is a great potential for bringing about purposeful learning among the students, if the teacher educator is able to take into account both the students’ prevailing conceptions and experiences and to discern the critical differences between the various ways of experiencing (Lo et al. 2004). Moreover, it is important that health education student teachers see the variety that exists in the ways of understanding how health can be approached during the lessons in schools, and understand the critical differences between their current understanding and the capability that is desired (cf. Dall’Alba 2000; Lo et al. 2004; McKenzie 2002).

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