Session Information
23 SES 08 C, Physical Teachers' Education, Health and School Curriculum
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper takes its point of departure in two simultaneously tendencies being highlighted in education in the last twenty years, an increase of health problems among children and youth, especially girls and an intensified focus on school's assignment of health promotion. Today, health educations often emphasize individual aspects and based on different manual-based programs grounded in psychological perspectives. The aim is many times formulated as teaching students how to cope with stress, relations and self-image (Coleman, 2009). The effects of the different intervention programs being used within health education has been investigated during the last two decades. A number of studies evaluate the different programmes looking for evidence for effective prevention or treatment (e.g. Merry, et.al. 2011). Some thinkers have put a critical perspective on these practices and describe them as a therapeutic culture that has intruded into education affecting both educational content and methods (Furedi, 2004; Ecclestone & Hayes, 2008). In this paper a specific attention is paid to one intervention program called DISA (Depression in Swedish adolescent). DISA is a manual-based health promotion program built on cognitive behavioral therapy. It aims at preventing depression and stress, and is designed for girls in eighth grade. Because the aim is universal prevention it is directed to all girls whom are not having any specific problem. DISA is often held during regular school hours with obligatory participation for each girl in a school class. By combining the work of Foucault and Haraway the aim is to investigate the intra-action of discursive, material and technological processes within the practices of health promotion and the bodily figurations that this produces. Herein, I will apply the notion of problematization to examine how the problem with girls (ill)health produces specific practices of health promotion. Furthermore, how the enactment of the DISA program constitutes specific performativities of bodily figurations.
The theoretical framework that I found productive in the analysis is built on the philosophers Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway. With the Foucauldian notion of problematization (1991; 1992) this paper takes point of departure in the concern with girls’ (ill)health in educational policies and the prevention practice of DISA being implemented herein. In Foucault’s theoretical thinking the interconnection of the discursive and the non-discursive within power relations is a core issue especially by the concepts of discursive practices and bio-power. In the elaboration of power, Foucault (1980) stresses, how power is at play in a network of practices, institutions, and technologies. Here, power is a productive network with access to the bodies of individuals, to their behavior and attitudes. Haraway, as feminist corpomaterialists, emphasizes how becomings of bodies are entangled to the technical and the textual (Haraway, 1991; Lykke, 2010). Fore mostly, providing an approach where it can be possible to investigate the iterative intra-action of agential components and how this produces specific becomings of the bodies involved (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Bill 2007/08:110. En förnyad hälsopolitik [A renewed health policy]. Fredrik Reinfeldt, Maria Larsson (m, kd). Coleman, J. (2009). ‘Well-being in schools: empirical measure, or politician’s dream?’ Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 35, Nr. 3, pp. 281-292. Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (2003) The landscape of Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Ecclestone, K. & Hayes, D. (2008). The dangerous rise of therapeutic education. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972- 1977. Brighton: Harvester P. Foucault, M. (1991). ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’. In The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1992). The history of sexuality. Vol. 2, The use of pleasure. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Furedi, F. (2004). Therapy culture: cultivating vulnerability in a certain age. London: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. (2000). How like a leaf: an interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lykke, N. (2010). Feminist studies: a guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. London: Routledge. Merry, S.N., Hetrick, S.E., Cox, G.R., Brudevold-Iversen, T., Bir, J.J., McDowell, H. (2011). Psychological and educational interventions for preventing depression in children and adolescents (Review). The chochrane collaboration, Published by John Wiley & Sons. Westling, Allodi, M. (2010). Pojkars och flickors psykiska hälsa i skolan: en kunskapsöversikt. [Boys 'and girls' mental health in school: a Research overview]. Report IX from the Delegation for Equality in school. Stockholm: Fritze.
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