A Health Educator’s Blog

There comes a time when a person needs to make a decision to enable greater personal effeciency.  I need to make such a decision with my online life.  I have tried to spread my thoughts in context across three separate blogs, but feel this has only resulted in ineffective and irregular blogging on my part.  Therefore this blog as a separate entity is ending.  All my blogging, which will include aspects from my work in Health Education, will occur at http://shanetechteach.edublogs.org.

Due to a few presentations I’ve given lately, a re-focus on the application of higher order thinking to health education has resulted.  In particular I have been focussing on whether our assessment tasks lead students to demonstrate higher order thinking and whether our evidence collection methods can demonstrate the ability of our students to demonstrate the higher order thinking.  For me this is particularly critical in task construction.

Thursday is the annual conference for the State Review Panel and District Review Panel Chairs.  Somewhat surprisingly, these meetings include lengthy and robust discussion on support of teacher development in the subject.  This year one session will be the annotation of tasks as exemplars of good task construction.  I will be keeny interested to hear the thoughts of my colleagues, and to then apply a critical eye to my own school’s tasks upon my return to school.

I’m hoping I can then tie this into preparations for upcoming eLearning professional development sessions I am leading, where I will explore the application of devices and technologies to the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  With the critical focus on pedagogy / higher order thinking I am confident of sound planning.

Recently I took the opportunity to openly and critically reflect on Health Education as a subject with my students.  I was particularly interested in their perceptions in regard to the difficulty and workload of the subject.  I have a productive relationship with my current class and trust them to be openly honest with me.  So after a quick introduction I split them into small groups to discuss.  I provided them with three specific questions, but welcomed comment and reflection outside of these;

1. Is there anything about Health Education that is too difficult?
2. Is the workload reasonable for students working towards an OP?
3. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

The answers in relation to the subject (not my teaching or managing of the subject) surprised me.  Generally the students did not find any of the concepts or subject matter difficult to understand.  All students rated English as a much harder subject, and most listed other options as more difficult than Health Education.  This surprised me as I am aware of a general perception amongst teachers that Health Education is a difficult subject.  But I guess when at its essence, there are only two concepts that are required understanding for Health Education that it may seem not as difficult to students.

The workload was not perceived as excessive, with the majority of students agreeing it was reasonable.  They recognised that particularly with integrated tasks the lessons experienced were directly related to developing their response to assessment tasks.  The one concern with workload was the sheer amount of reading and research that seemed required for understanding of a range of health issues.  (I have a system which eases this slightly for students, which I have explained in a post on my digital pedagogy blog – http://www.shanetechteach.edublogs.org)

There wasn’t anything they could suggest changing, although I believe this is mostly because I put them on the spot.  If they continue to think I predict they will come forward in the coming weeks and tell me.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile process to undertake.  If nothing else, it provides honest opinion on which to base critical reflection of personal performance.

A few recent experiences and situations has had me thinking critically about Health Education on a number of levels.  Syllabus review, planning for professional development, merging our subject with a university project and providing guidance to a pre-service teacher has had my mind being pushed.  There has been a constant shift between conceptual thinking and operational / functional thinking.

Conceptually, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the syllabus and what occurs in my class.  How do the different sections of the syllabus inter-relate to inform the understanding of teachers in this subject, and subsequently what impact does this have on the pedagogy and student outcomes.  How do I construct this into a logical order when guiding others through the development of work programs, assessment items and units of work?

Functionally, how do I effectively structure my lessons to ensure the quality of evidence submitted by my students, particularly in an integrated task, is representative of the quality of thinking they are capable of.  How do I structure tasks and criteria so there is no perceived advantage or disadvantage to group size?

These are questions that I will need to find answers to very quickly.  I know the answers are within my understanding of Health Education and the resources I have access to, its a matter of finding time to reflect and take notes.

Recently I have been taking the time to observe other teachers in other subjects.  One has been a senior English teacher teaching the writing of feature articles to year 12s.  This has really opened my eyes to the skill of writing – something I thought I had a reasonable handle on.  My perception is now that I have so much more to learn.  Consequently I wonder how my knowledge and abilities in writing have limited the effectiveness of my teaching and results of my students.  Fortunately our criteria for assessment do not rely heavily on language and literacy ability.

So much to think through.

Currently I am fortunate to be sharing my classroom with a motivated pre-service teacher. This has resulted in me focusing on purposeful planning for Health Education aspects, and providing an opportunity to engage in relevant discussion and reasoning for learning activities.  It was during one of thee discussions yesterday afternoon that a brainwave hit.  I suddenly saw a clear path to begin the journey for the integrated task.  This brainwave was somewhat informed by my recent reading of a colleagues notes from a seminar she attended (on building valid assessment practices for Health Education), extracts from Theory in a Nutshell by Don Nutbeam and Elizabeth Harris and reviewing critical thinking strategies as developed by Rodin Education.

Using “Theory in a Nutshell” to frame the lesson progression, we will have the groups brainstorm the existing beliefs, social norms and organisational practices they have researched in relation to the health issue (which is society’s misrepresentation of obesity as a health concern).  We will re-arrange the classroom to enable group work and discourage cross-group conversation.  Once they have brainstormed, we will control exposure to other group’s ideas.  The purpose of this is to keep them thinking.  Once they have seen other groups’ work (we will limit it to 2 other groups) they receive another chance to update their own brainstorm list.  The intended result is a list of options they could target with their campaign.

The next step will be to highlight what they believe is targetable. What do they believe it possible to change?  This is still a discussion within the groups.  Each group will then be exposed to what I am terming a “Black Hat Presentation.”  They will present to the other groups what they believe is a targetable range of options.  The remaining groups will purposely adopt a lack hat thinking style – focusing on negatives.  My purpose here is to hopefully expose them to potential barriers before they begin implementation.  As each group receives their black hat feedback, they convene outside the room to consider the feedback and add further information to their brainstorm list.  Once they have completed that they re-join the class as a black hat thinker.

From this, they should end up with a refined list of targets.  We will then categorise those targets under the three social justice principles.  This should immediately highlight to them the inequity they should be targeting in their campaign. At this point we will ask them to identify what they believe is targettable change.  The key will be us continually asking “Why do you believe this?” requiring them to provide evidence in support of their choice.

I then intend to expose them to four health promotion models; Health Belief, Theory of Planned Behaviour, Social Cognitive theory and Ecological theory.  This presentation will include concept maps and brief outlines.  The groups will be asked to select a model they intend to align their campaign with.  Again, they will be required to provide evidence to reason their choice.  Some of this evidence will be generated by the use of critical thinking strategies.

Firstly, they will construct a Pros/Cons/Questions table for each of the models. This could be done collaboratively or separately as groups.  I think we will begin separately, then collaborate towards the end.  From this we will identify key perspectives that impact on success of health promotion campaigns, and extract the PCQ into an extended PCQ.  This will enable us to create a decision making matrix where the key perspectives become criteria, and the groups will rank each health promotion model against that criteria.  They will be encouraged to adjust the scaling of criteria if they believe it important – again with justification.  Once this is done they will have valid information on which to base their choice.

Once this choice is made, they will be required to research current health promotion campaigns that utilise the selected health promotion model.  These will be used to highlight factors enabling success.

I intend to generate these documents and share them with you.  When I do I will post the link in a blog post.

By far, the most challenging aspect of health education for me is teaching the integrated task.  I believe it is also the the aspect of health education I perform least effectively.  Adding to my challenge currently is the fact that I have welcomed a pre-service teacher into my classroom and need to ensure her ability to teach an integrated task is not inhibited by my (personal reflection of) poor performance in teaching the task.

I have collected an extensive range of ideas, notes and resources that I will use to guide my planning and teaching for this component of health education.  I’m hoping that I will have time this week (after a very hectic couple of weeks recently) to sort through all these and construct an appropriate plan – which of cource I will share with you via this blog.

I am enjoying this unit so much.  The class has come alive with informed debate and differences of opinion.  Surprisingly the one student who I thought I would have most debates with has been the easiest to convince of the alternate point of view.  This could be used as a learning experience to demonstrate how easily some adolescents are convinced of a proposed truth, but I think that might push the relationship too far.

There have been some significant interruptions to this unit, resulting in us losing 6 lessons (2 weeks) in this first six weeks of term.  As stated in the previous post, the students negotiated a due date for the research report of week 6.  Losing 2 weeks of learning time in that first six weeks had caused a change in how I am presenting the learning, and how much I am expecting to them to learn independently.  But a due date is a due date and I don’t want to get into moving them, as interruptions will always be there.

This lost time has me scouring a lot of the research papers, and highlighting / bookmarking appropriate sections for the students to gather information from.  (You can read how I do this on my Journey With Digital Pedagogy blog.)  This will make it easier for students to find the information, but does not reduce the requirement for them to select information from research.  I always tell my students that an”A” student will work beyond what I provide them with.  However as time is short I need to put in some extra effort to ensure achievement is representative of their potential, especially considering the general poor performance last term.

One activity has highlighted the desire of some students to complete extra work they find engaging or useful.  I have initiated what is entitled the “Health Ed 2.0 Expansion Pack.”  This will essentially be a group of extension tasks that are voluntary.  The tasks will be delivered, responded to and managed online – they will not enter the classroom.  I will make this distinction to ensure students do not feel pressured to complete the tasks.  What is interesting is that more students respond to these tasks, than the number that complete homework assigned during class time.  It could be because I am engaging them in a context in which they feel comfortable responding (its just between me and them), but I am excited that the response is occurring.  This will inspire me to continue providing the extension tasks. If you are interested in following these, then just go here.

The next couple of weeks will see the students research and prepare their submission.  This becomes a great opportunity for me to interact with them on an individual basis, providing specific feedback relevant to their skills and knowledge in Health Education.

I always look forward to this unit.  It proves a real challenge to open the eyes of my students and show them one of their health beliefs is in fact false.  With this class, who are more outspoken and willing to challenge, this should be fun.

Within this unit I will introduce the paradigm of “Health at Every Size” which targets the modern obsession with obesity as unfounded and based on misinterpretations of facts.  The process of breaking down the existing beliefs and preparing them to accept an opposing idea is a carefully planned and implemented one.  In this unit more than any other I find it useful to present a wide range of supportive evidence.  I will spend a number of lessons presenting summaries of research and discussing why they have the beliefs they have.  One of the most interesting facts is that the misinterpretation of obesity as a health concern has been prepetuated by education and the health industry!

No doubt health educators with traditional beliefs regardoing obesity are querying my thinking now.  However I encourage you, stay with me on this journey and perhaps you may also accept a different point of view.

The unit started today by negotiating with the students the submission dates for the 2 assessment items.  This unit has a research report (individual) followed by an integrated task (group action research).  Due to the stress they experienced at the end of last term with multiple assessment due, the class has decided submission dates that will allow them appropriate focus.  So I have 6 weeks to ensure they have enough knowledge and skills to write the research report.

The single most effective measure of my performance as a teacher lies in the results achieved by my learners in the end of unit submissions.  Did students generally achieve to their potential?  Did students fare better or worse under these conditions?

With this unit, and the definite push towards independent work rate, achievements were scattered.  Some students fared better, some worse and some as per expected standard.  What does this mean – ultimately individual learning preferences will impact achievement in any learning environment.

The work plan did lead students to produce the required materials, and the ePortfolio space did enable the submission of materials.  I still have not achieved my goal of all students submitting their materials digitally, but I intend to achieve that by the end of this year.

At the end of each unit I ask my learners to review and rate my performance.  Previously I have done this on a paper handout which I collect and collate.  The review is anonymous and provides them the opportunity to honestly provide feedback.  This time around I have used a free online survey service – Zoomerang.  This will provide the ultimate in anonymity, plus the bonus of automatic collation of survey results.  One significant change I have made in this survey is I have also asked them to review their own performance critically.  I intend to follow this up with a focussed debrief on the first lesson back in term 2.  I feel this is necessary as more students did not work effectively under the model of learning implemented in this unit, than those that did.

Within the current environmental health unit, which I purposely set up  as a practice run for the integrated task next unit, I have developed what I think may be a solid method of ensuring reasoning and validation may be completed by each student effectively.

I have developed a 10 step work plan which outlines all the actions the groups are to complete in the process of this project.  The important aspect is that I have outlined 6 steps that are to occur before the students begin to think of project actions.  They will have completed research, a risk analysis, review of health promotion models and evaluation of existing practice prior to suggesting health actions.  By requiring this, students will have a sufficient amount of information at their disposal for reasoning and validation.

To ensure it is used,I have built a simple guide to completing the validation that allows students to make choices on which information they will use.

In order to keep all working documents accessible by all group members at all times, I have created each group a project room and enrolled the group members as owners.  This allows them to modify the appearance of the room and upload information to it.  I have advised them, this is how they will submit their items for assessment also.

For your interest, the 10 step plan is;

1. Decide on a proposal to work from.
2. Gather suggested secondary evidence.
3. Identify a range of existing practices.
4. Judge the existing practice using the 3 column table (similarities / differences / advice)
5. Conduct a risk analysis using the provided template.
6. Brainstorm the social determinants applicable at the school.
7. Identify targettable health outcomes / behaviours.
8. Brainstorm project actions.
9. Complete campaign validation,
10. Build campaign materials.