HTLH 420: Methods of Health Instruction

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HTLH 420Methods of Health Instruction

• Chapter 3 The School Health Education Curriculum

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Health Education

• The elementary-middle school teacher has at least
  as much influence on the overall development of
  each youngster as any of the immediate forces in
  his or her environment

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Health Education

• Primary responsibility for health rests with
  parents and school role is to supplement
• Too often these roles are reversed
• Especially when dealing with health behaviors
  that can be detrimental to children

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Health Education

• Health education is a process to influence young
  students health practices, attitudes, and
  knowledge
• The key difference between health and other
  subjects is the expected outcomes
• Health education must be
• Motivating
• Relevant
• Timely
• Provide for student and teacher involvement

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Health Education

• An effective health teacher must
• Have appropriate qualifications
• Training in health education field
• The ability to plan curriculum
• Have a thorough understanding of the concept of
  developmental tasks and their relationship to the
  needs, interests, and maturational stages of
  youngsters

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Health Education

• The ability to plan and implement an
  instructional program
• Insight into the basis of health behavior The
  ability to employ a variety of strategies to
  build skills and effect behavioral change
• The ability to develop concepts
• The ability to construct attainable outcomes
• The ability to evaluate the curriculum content
  and method of instruction

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Curriculum Design

• Historically, curriculum has been designed using
  the ten content areas of health education
• Body System Curriculum
• The human body is the central theme
• Advantage generates interest among students
• Weakness fails to deal with issues that are not
  physiological

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Curriculum Design

• Health Problem Curriculum
• Advantage emphasizes prevention and
  skill-learning
• Weakness ignores the generic skills that are
  applicable to many different kinds of problems

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Curriculum Design

• Health Content Curriculum
• Advantage provides comprehensive coverage, is
  easily implemented and has some national
  consistency
• Weakness Emphasizes facts at the expense of
  skills
• Facts approach is a weakness because health
  knowledge is constantly changing. Instructor
  must stay current

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Curriculum Design

• Health Topic Curriculum
• Similar to health content but includes sub-areas
  related to lifestyle choices
• Weakness can severely limit the content covered

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Curriculum Design

• Health Concepts Curriculum
• Strengths focus is on concepts (ideas) rather
  than content
• Provides an effective means of organization since
  it employs major themes running throughout the
  entire curriculum K-12
• Weakness requires well prepared health
  education instructor

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Curriculum Design

• High Risk Behavior Curriculum
• Weakness too narrow in focus and is difficult
  for teachers to teach skills regarding the
  specific behaviors

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Curriculum

• Needs of our students are changing
• Our curriculum must teach facts (cognitive
  knowledge) but must also help students develop
  skills in problem-solving, decision-making,
  critical thinking, (affective domain)
  communication, literacy, and numerical skills
  that will lead to healthy behavior and positive
  lifestyles

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Gallup Poll Health Education

• Nearly 9 in 10 adolescents believe that health
  information and skills are of equal or greater
  importance than other school subjects
• Eighty-two percent of parents believe health
  education is at least as important than other
  subjects taught in school

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Gallup Poll Health Education

• Parents embrace teaching skills like
  problem-solving, decision-making and other skills
  applicable to health
• Administrators concur that health education is
  equal to or of greater importance than other
  things taught in school

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National Health Education Standards

• Improves student learning by providing a
  foundation for curriculum development,
  instruction, and assessment of student performance

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National Health Education Standards

• Overall goal is to increase health literacy
• Definition of health literacy
• Capacity of individuals to obtain, interpret, and
  understand basic health information and services
  and the competence to use the information and
  services in ways that enhance health.

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Health-Literate People

• Demonstrates the following four characteristics
• Critical thinker and problem solver
• Identifies health problems and addresses them
• Utilizes credible resources and decision-making
  skills to achieve health goals
• Responsible, productive citizen
• Through health education, people can have a safe,
  secure, and healthy quality of life

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Health-Literate People

• Demonstrates the following four characteristics
• 3. Self-directed learner
• Uses numerical and critical-thinking skills to
  gather, analyze, and apply health information
• 4. Effective communicator
• They are health advocates through their verbal,
  written, artistic and/or technological skills

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National Health Education Standards

• Standards are made up of four components
• The standard
• A rationale statement
• Performance indicators
• Learning assessments

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National Health Education Standards

• Standard 1
• Students will comprehend concepts related to
  health promotion and disease prevention
• Standard 2
• Students will demonstrate the ability to access
  valid health information and health-promoting
  products and services

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National Health Education Standards

• Standard 3
• Students will demonstrate the ability to practice
  health-enhancing behaviors and reduce health
  risks
• Standard 4
• Students will analyze the influence of culture,
  media, technology, and other factors on health

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National Health Education Standards

• Standard 5
• Students will demonstrate the ability to use
  interpersonal communication skills to enhance
  health
• Standard 6
• Students will demonstrate the ability to use
  goal-setting and decision-making skills to
  enhance health

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National Health Education Standards

• Standard 7
• Students will demonstrate the ability to advocate
  for personal, family, and community health

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Standards, Scope, and Sequence

• Scope what to teach
• Sequence when to teach
• National Health Education Standards provide a
  framework as to what should be taught
• Health content areas and CDC adolescent risk
  behaviors can be incorporated into the scope
• A sequence framework in the Standards is
  established through specific-grade-level
  performance indicators for grades K-4, grades
  5-8, and grades 9-11

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Curriculum

• Methodology has changed from memory-centered
  learning of content to acquisition of knowledge
  and skills
• This requires a well-conceived plan that begins
  with the unit plan

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Unit Planswww.courses.dsu.edu/hlth420/Unit_Plan.d
oc

• Unit Title, Grade level, Time period, Instructors
• National Health Education Standard(s)
• Performance Indicator(s)
• Learning Assessment(s)
• Content
• Learning Strategies or Experience
• Two skills
• Health Education Learner-Centered Instructional
  Strategies on file in Library
• Evaluation Technique
• Resources

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Daily Lesson Plans

• www.courses.dsu.edu/hlth420/Lesson_Plan.doc

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Curriculum Approaches

• Two Theories
• Direct Instruction
• Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

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Direct Instruction

• Scheduled, planned instruction
• Textbooks or planned curriculum
• Scope is based on the textbook
• Advantages
• Teachers are used to it
• Implementation is easy
• Many commercial curriculum available

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Direct Instruction

• Disadvantages
• Scope is based on textbook rather than needs,
  problems areas, community concerns, etc.
• Health is seen as a separate issue

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Gaining popularity because of
• Knowledge explosion
• Much of the newest health information and
  statistics are omitted due to age of textbook
• Relevancy
• Students get bored with formal topics. They need
  to see the connection between what they are
  learning in school and what is going on in their
  life

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Common Sense
• Life is not a series of separate events requiring
  knowledge from one discipline only.
• Teacher collaboration
• Integrations requires teachers to work together
  to develop the curriculum. This creates respect
  for subject matter

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Health Education should provide pieces of
  information that can be unified by a common
  principle, problem or theme
• Health Education should be flexible
• Health Education should be creative

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Advantages
• Generic skills may be best learned through this
  approach
• Can be a pragmatic use of the disciplines
• Parent involvement can be enhanced
• Can play a role in providing information,
  service, advice, planning, monitoring, training,
  and advocacy
• Integration in elementary school is relatively
  easy
• Students remain with teachers all day

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Middle school integration is more challenging
• Phase 1 Internal and external research
• Curriculum mapping topics taught month by month
• Phase 2 Proposal development
• Phase 3 Implementing and Monitoring a pilot
  program
• Phase 4 Adoption of the program

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Integration or Interdisciplinary Instruction

• Web a unifying theme that is broad enough to
  stretch across the curriculum but not so broad it
  is worthless

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Integration Web

• Theme selection must validate the following
  questions
• What is important about this theme and will it
  promote future learning?
• Does it have relevancy to the real world?
• Are the materials available?
• Is it meaningful and age-appropriate?
• Does it tie into the other units?
• Is it worth the time needed to create and
  implement it?