Health education in Australian primary schools is usually taught by classroom generalist teachers, who often do not have the time or knowledge to confidently include health in classroom lessons.
In light of this, we wanted to understand:
- What influences how Australian primary teachers teach health education?
- What impact does participating in HealthLit4Kids have on how Australian primary teachers teach health education?
We conducted focus groups with 30 teachers across four Tasmanian primary schools to help us answer these questions.
We discovered that primary school teachers generally based their health education teaching on personal understanding which was influenced by their own values, philosophies and social networks. We also found that there was often a disconnect between what was taught using this approach and the student achievement standards contained in the Australian health and physical education curriculum.
The HealthLit4Kids program raised teacher awareness about health education and health literacy, but more needs to be done to address differences between teachers’ personal ideas about health education and what is detailed in the curriculum.
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Cruickshank, V., Pill, S., Williams, J., Nash, R., Mainsbridge, C.P., MacDonald, A., & Elmer, S. (2022). Exploring the ‘everyday philosophies’ of generalist primary school teacher delivery of health literacy education, Curriculum Studies in Health and Physical Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/25742981.2022.2059384
