Introduction

The phenomenon of health is an integral part of human life and, moreover, the level of health decides in a significant way about quality of life by setting the limits of physical capacity and biological independence as well as the frameworks of psychosocial functioning. Therefore health with all its deficiencies is somehow integrated into the process of experiencing one's own life, the world, and any relationship with another man. This statement is fully justified by the fact that the concept of health functions not only in medicine and physical culture sciences, but also in the humanities and social sciences. The issue of health is clearly present in pedagogy. The category of health and upbringing for health can be found in the history of education and teaching ideas, and today it enters the main trends in the pedagogical discourse. Its theory is based on the salutogenic perspective of health and approaches that connect human health with quality of life.

The salutogenic health paradigm as the theoretical background of the pedagogical discourse

The salutogenic perspective refers to the model of salutogenesis developed in the seventies of the twentieth century by Aaron Antonovsky (Antonovsky, 1979). Its essence is expressed in the anti-nativist thesis about man's possibility of acquiring health through the use of resources and potentials inherent not only in the sphere of their biology, but also in knowledge and competence, psychological traits, physical characteristics and sociocultural environment in which they live.