Kerry Renwick

Critical health literacy: shifting textual–social practices in the health classroom

This paper will consider ways in which students are constructed as aliens in health classrooms. Creating the classroom as a setting for health promotion requires closer attention to those who make use of such space. If classrooms are places where diversity exists and is recognised, then health educators are challenged to consider how students are positioned. Too often, students have been positioned as the ‘other’ and therefore subjected to accommodation and assimilation to dominant discourses of health. In what ways do students as ‘aliens in the classroom’ get the opportunity to develop health literacy as a way to speak for, to or from their ‘other’/own space? Developing critical health literacy can help inform classroom practice in new, engaging directions. This leads, as this paper argues, to health education praxis – combining reflection and action for transformative purposes, for both teachers and students. Praxis offers both a philosophical starting point and a set of practical guidelines for how health teachers view and work with the aliens inhabiting the classroom.

Critical Health Literacy in 3D

Literacy is increasingly being thought of as a social practice with its use and understandings being context dependent. As an essential element within and of education, literacy offers possibilities for engaging in everyday life. Health literacy has emerged as a means to develop health-promoting practices that has meaning in social contexts. Reflecting biomedical interests, the focus of health literacy is predominately constructed as a neutral and technical process that has specific meaning and practice, positioning it as functional literacy. This paper presents one approach to critical health literacy based on a multi-dimension (3D) approach that presents literacy as a situated social practice. The 3D model will be described and then the model’s application to health literacy will be explored. The use of the 3D model to build critical health literacy challenges the biomedical approach to health literacy as solely functional literacy. Functional literacy is not sufficient for a person to build a critical social consciousness and illuminate how social determinates of health create inequitable health or how it could be ameliorated. Social justice and equity are presented as fundamental pre-requisites for health. Working with young people in context of schools, the reciprocal relationship between health and education offers space for possibilities around literacy skills and understanding about what creates health. The same space can enable young people to see opportunities for empowerment to shape and recreate their social reality. Health literacy for social justice and equity therefore has to include possibilities for understanding and responding to socio-cultural knowing.

Same same but different: curriculum representations of health education

ABSTRACT The development of curriculum for health education in schools is an area of contestation. Drawing on the provincial curriculum of British Columbia and the Australian national curriculum, this article explores both common and different approaches to school-based health education and promotion. Students experience the impacts of the social determinants of health on a daily basis yet they are not specific elements that are attended to or moderated through the curriculum. This article reports on a directed content analysis of health education and promotion curriculum documents. Key concepts were identified and discussed. Both curriculum documents align around the value of health to the individual and broader community; identification of learning standards; linkages to core competencies/capabilities; and reference to indigenous/first nation as cross curriculum priorities. Differences include how physical health is emphasised; behaviour change as a specific outcome; and use of literacy as a social practice.

Bricolage and the Health Promoting School

Purpose – The propositional knowledge about the Health Promoting School (HPS) and how it privileges the health sector, and research through intervention and behaviour change rather than gaining an understanding of how social bases of health impact and influence individuals and the wider school community. The purpose of this paper is to explore how bricolage offers opportunity for understanding complexity, thick description and inter- and multi-disciplinary work. The experience of health promotion and what it looks like at the school level and provides epistemological considerations for reframing research about HPSs for purposes of social justice and equity through bricolage. Design/methodology/approach – An introduction reveals the challenges of health promotion settings, and schools in particular to achieve social justice and equity. Bricolage is discussed with reference to complexity, thick description and inter- and multi-disciplinary work. Considerations are given to bricolage as research to gain unde...

Critical health literacies? Introduction

Health literacy is increasingly recognised as a central aspect of health promotion in schools and in the wider community. The World Health Organisation definition of health literacy infers the use of cognitive and social skills enabling individuals to access, understand and utilise information specifically for promoting and maintaining their health (WHO, 1998). Refining the concept, Nutbeam (2000) argued for a three-level model of health literacy involving functional health literacy, interactive health literacy and critical health literacy. But what is to be understood as critical health literacies? And how are these theorised and practiced? The New London Group criticised traditional literacy pedagogy arguing that such work is narrowly defined and concerned with ‘formalised, monolingual, monoculture, and rule-governed forms of language’ (1996, p. 61). Predominant definitions of health literacy, such as this from the American Medical Association, reflect a similar functional approach: ‘(T)he ability to perform basic reading and numerical tasks required to function in the health care environment’ (1999, p. 553). Teachers face serious challenges within contemporary classrooms as they attempt to connect with students in meaningful ways so as to develop a ‘constituency of the future, our future citizenry’ (Green, 1999, p. 37). To do so, educators are moving away from teaching and learning literacy as a linear and purely functional process. Today, ‘literacy needs to be reconceived as a plurality of literacies ... schools are [increasingly] called on to foster the development of these changing multiple literacies’ (Unsworth, 2001, p. 8). Such pluralities enable the identification of multiple literacies and accordingly involve a range of purported capacities including visual literacies, curriculum literacies, cyberliteracies and critical literacies (including critical health literacies). Supporting student learning is fundamental in contemporary educational practice and contributes to the development of robust knowledge economies. However, institutional attention aimed at the development of predetermined skills seems to dominate the curriculum at the expense of ‘socially critical understandings and expertise’ (Green, 1999, p. 44). In this special issue, a range of perspectives is offered examining the development of literacies as a framework for health-related learning as situated social practice. Renwick’s paper calls into view what she calls health education praxis and the possibilities this kind of work harbours for developing critical health literacies. The health classroom becomes a space for using critical health literacies as both a personal and social attribute and as health pedagogy. Within the exploration of contemporary health promotion messages and programmes, there is consideration of their value and impact on young people together with understandings about how health is developed socially and inequitably. Mobilised by teachers and students through reflection and action, personal and collective critical health literacies have the potential to transform lives and empower communities. Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education, 2014 Vol. 5, No. 3, 197–199, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18377122.2014.940807

Cross-Cultural School-Based Encounters as Global Health Education.

Objective: Drawing on the concepts of the cosmopolitan person and democratic health education, this article explores the merits of primary school–based, cross-cultural dialogues for global health education. Design: A qualitative study of the learning outcomes of the Move|Eat|Learn (MEL) project. MEL facilitates cultural meetings, primarily Skype-based, between students from Kenya and Denmark, with the aim of promoting reflection on differences and similarities in everyday living conditions and their impact on health practices. Setting: Three Danish and one Kenyan primary schools. Methods: Qualitative analysis of 18 focus group discussions with 72 Danish and 36 Kenyan students. Results: Cross-cultural dialogues promoted students’ engagement and reflections on their own and peers’ health condition, access to education, food cultures, gender and family structures. Conclusion: Findings indicate the merits of cross-cultural dialogues as a means of educating students to become global health agents with a cosmopolitan outlook.