Maria Bruselius-Jensen

Pedometers and participatory school-based health education – an exploratory study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how pedometers (simple gadgets that count steps) can be used as tools in participatory health education to enhance primary school childrens insights into, and abilities to reflect on, physical activity in their daily life. The paper focuses on how using pedometers fosters participation and enhances reflection concerning physical activity. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on findings from an exploratory project with sixth-grade classes (12-13 years) in four Danish primary schools. The approach is called Imove. In Imove, pupils use pedometers to study their own patterns of physical activity, transform their data into statistics, and use the statistical representation to reflect on how physical activity is integrated into everyday life patterns, and how different activities constitute an active life. Findings – The paper concludes that pedometers support pupils’ participation in studying their own health practices, and the step data provide new ...

Promoting health literacy in the classroom

Objective: Research has shown that developing health literacy in early life is critical to reducing lifestyle-related diseases, with schools being identified as central settings for this purpose. This paper examines how one classroom-based health educational programme, IMOVE, helped Danish primary school pupils develop health literacy related to physical activity. It discusses curriculum-integrated health education’s contribution to promoting health literacy. Design: Qualitative classroom observation. Setting: IMOVE was implemented in 12 school classes (grades 5–7) in four public schools in Copenhagen, Denmark, during the autumn and winter of 2013–2014. Participants numbered 281 pupils and nine teachers. Method: We used Nutbeam’s conceptualisation of health literacy as a theoretical framework to assess which levels of health literacy the programme would promote; we assessed these using data derived from 59 IMOVE lesson transcripts. Results: IMOVE primarily contributed to the development of functional health literacy by building a relational understanding between everyday practice and step numbers. We observed the presence of interactive health literacy in discussions about how pupils and teachers could change their daily practices. Only a limited number of discussions supported the development of critical health literacy. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that educators can successfully integrate health literacy development into classroom-based curriculum teaching, with pupils’ own step counts and associated reflections positively influencing learning. However, in this study, classroom teaching was limited to a focus on cognitive skills and only partially supported the development of more critical health literacy skills. Our findings call for further research into approaches to support classroom-based critical health literacy development.

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.

Reconceiving barriers for democratic health education in Danish schools: an analysis of institutional rationales

ABSTRACT Health promotion and education researchers and practitioners advocate for more democratic approaches to school-based health education, including participatory teaching methods and the promotion of a broad and positive concept of health and health knowledge, including aspects of the German educational concept of bildung. Although Denmark, from where the data of this article are derived, has instituted policies for such approaches, their implementation in practice faces challenges. Adopting a symbolic interactionist analytical framework this paper explores and defines two powerful institutional rationales connected to formal and informal social processes and institutional purposes of schools, namely conservatism and Neoliberalism. It is empirically described and argued how these institutional rationales discourage teachers and students from including a broad and positive concept of health, the element of participation, and the promotion of general knowledge as legitimate elements in health education. This paper thus contains a perspective on health education practice, which, in a new way, contributes to explain the relatively slow progress of democratic approaches to school health education.