Learning objectives

By engaging with the text in this chapter, students will be able to:

• define health and wellbeing and understand the importance of health education in learning and life

• appreciate the need for and recognise the value in using a positive, strengths-based approach that builds on the competencies and resources of students and the community to frame learning about personal, social and community health

• understand how to address students’ needs and interests in a developmentally appropriate way to build health literacies

• acknowledge the effectiveness of developing a whole-school and community approach to health promotion and preventative health

• recognise and utilise health settings for integration of general capabilities and cross-curricular priorities in education(continued)

• develop programs that are inclusive and address the diverse needs of the school and community

• comprehend the imperative to find and use recent and credible research to inform teaching and student inquiry

• effectively integrate health learning in, through and about movement and physical activity and within other learning areas

• recognise the impact of social determinants of health on student capacity to implement behaviours conducive to health and wellbeing.

Courtney was appointed to a small rural secondary school where she was the fourth health and physical education specialist in four years. None of her predecessors had established health education as a credible area of learning, yet the school community had a history of vehicular and farm-related injuries and deaths, unplanned pregnancies, suicide and racially based bullying. Courtney knew the students needed a program about personal, social and community health that built on health literacies in a proactive and positive way. She decided to present a program outline to the school principal and develop a health and physical education work program that embraced the strengths of the students and the community to support healthy and safer behaviours.