Anthony Leow

Health-education policy interface: the implementation of the Eat Well Be Active policies in schools

While grappling with their traditional core business of imbuing students with official curricular knowledge, schools have simultaneously, increasing demands to take on health promotion responsibilities. This paper examines the mandated implementation of the Eat Well Be Active (EWBA) Action Plan and its subsidiary ‘Smart’ policies in schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. Within the context of health promotion, the interaction between the health and education policy interfaces was explored. In particular, we paid close attention to the responses of the schools and their staff to the convergence of various health policies within their institutions. Drawing on Bernsteins concept of field, this paper reports our analyses of responses within the reproduction field to the imperatives of the Smart policies. The results suggest that there exists a disjunction between the recontextualising and reproduction fields in terms of the EWBA policy intent and implementation.

Policy-as-discourse and schools in the role of health promotion: the application of Bernstein's transmission context in policy analysis

As one of the most important sites in and through which state agendas are articulated and disseminated, schools and teachers play critical roles in the implementation of state-driven policies and initiatives targeted at children and young people. This is especially pertinent in the current educational landscape where schools and teachers are vested with the responsibility to address a myriad of public health issues (e.g. smoking, alcohol education, etc.). The work of Basil Bernstein on pedagogic discourse is apposite to understanding how discourses external to the educational field (i.e. health promotion) become re-contextualised to serve educational purposes. Using Queenslands Eat Well Be Active (EWBA) policies as a backdrop, this paper draws on Bernsteins model of transmission context, and examines the discourses embedded within the policies. Through its focus on the classification and framing of the discourses within the EWBA policies, this paper aims to: (1) reveal the potential and expediency of Bernsteins model of transmission context in policy analysis; and (2) unmask the hegemony embedded within the policies.

Health education and health promotion: Beyond cells and bells

In both the mass media and the scholarly literature the role of schools in reducing rates of obesity is seen as self-evident. This belief tends to rest on what may seem commonsense ideas about the time children spend in school and a preference for preventing weight gain rather than trying to reverse it in adulthood. It is also consistent with neoliberal preferences for individual, competitive and privatised inter ventions as opposed to broader public policy responses. The following social policy analysis suggests that there are grounds for doubting the wisdom of these assumptions and offers a more nuanced assessment of them.Just over 25 years ago, a book entitled The Politics of Health Education: Raising the Issues (Rodmell & Watt, 1986) was published in the United Kingdom. It was the fi rst book of its kind and emphasis, and its publication refl ected a marked rise in concern about health education, both its imperatives and practices. It was one of the fi rst books at the time to take up questions related to the politics of health education, and possibly the only one. In the Introduction, the Editors state that the book came into being as a response to their, along with others’, concerns about prevailing individualistic and behaviouristic models of health education. In particular, they suggested that “the extent to which health education is able to challenge inequities in the area of inequalities in health and illness is the basic subject matter of this book” (Rodmell & Watt, 1986, p. 2). The book was but part of a fl urry of scholarship at the time spurred on by what is commonly understood to be the “critical turn”. We will return to discuss the critical turn and its associated hopes and effects, its eruptions and disruptions later in the chapter. Fast-forward 25 years, and we fi nd ourselves writing for a new book, a book that, just like Rodmell and Watt’s, is deeply concerned with the politics of health education and the current state of play (see Part I of this volume).Health Education: Critical perspectives provides a socio-cultural and critical approach to health education. The book draws together international experts in the fields of health and education who deconstruct contemporary discourses and practices, and re-imagine a health education that both connects with young people and offers a way forward in addressing issues of health and wellbeing.Chapters within specifically link academic work on neoliberalism, healthism, risk and the body to wider discourses of health and health education. They challenge current practices and call for a re-thinking of current health programs in education settings. A unique feature of this book is the analyses of health education from both political and applied levels across a range of international contexts.The book is divided into three sections: • the social and political contexts informing health education. • how individual health issues (sexuality, alcohol, mental health, the body and obesity, nutrition) articulate in education in complex ways. • alternative ways to think about health and health education pedagogy.The overall theme of the book offers a perspective that the current approach to health education - promoting a fear of ill health, self-surveillance and individual responsibility - can become a form of health fascism, and we need to be cognisant of this potential and its consequences for young people. The book will be of key interest to academics and researchers exploring the political context of health education.