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The University of Southampton
Southampton Education School

Better training needed to help new teachers promote healthy lifestyles to children

Published: 17 February 2014

Research by the University of Southampton suggests new teachers could be better trained to help them promote health and lifestyle issues to children in schools.

Health Day exhibition
Public Health England

A survey of managers of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses has shown there is a lack of attention paid to public health priorities in teacher training and little consistency in helping trainees to develop the skills they need to promote positive health behaviours to pupils. Government public health priorities include issues such as, healthy eating, physical exercise and preventing smoking, drug and alcohol abuse.

Dr Jonathan Shepherd, the study’s lead researcher and Principal Research Fellow at the University’s Southampton Health Technology Assessments Centre (SHTAC), says: “Until now, there has been no clear overview of how trainee teachers are prepared during ITE in England to promote health and wellbeing to children in schools. We hope this study – the first national, comprehensive survey into the issue – will help address this.”

Researchers from SHTAC, Southampton Education School and Medicine at the University of Southampton sent online questionnaires to 220 ITE course managers in higher education institutions and employment and school-centred courses, of which 74 returned completed forms. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 19 course managers.

Based on the survey findings, the researchers found that for new teachers there is:
* a lack of attention and little consistency in provision of adequate training to equip them with the skills they need to promote public health priorities in the classroom
* a greater emphasis is given in their training to topics perceived as being more closely relevant to a pupil’s learning, such as emotional health
* the majority of ITE providers recognised the importance of inclusion of health and well-being in the teacher training curriculum in England and held a holistic perspective on education
* little use of external expertise from health professionals, such as nurses and doctors, to support trainee teachers in building their knowledge and confidence in health matters

The researchers also found that the main barrier to health promotion training was a lack of time in the ITE curriculum and a perception that health and well-being were lower priorities than other aspects of education in new government education policies.

Learning about the importance of your health and wellbeing
Yoga workshop

Dr Jenny Byrne from the Southampton Education School, comments:
" At Southampton we believe passionately in equipping our trainee teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to teach health related issues and promote health effectively. It is a vitally important part of their training, especially in the light of increased concerns about the health of young people, such as obesity, emotional and behavioural problems, smoking, alcohol abuse and sexual health (DH, 2010). Teachers also have a responsibility to safeguard the pupils they teach. I believe that well informed and well trained teachers are likely to be in a better position to identify and respond appropriately and competently to signs of child abuse and neglect.

In many ways, Southampton goes against the grain with regards to health education – investing a high level of resource in training our pre-service teachers to promote health, despite the drive in teacher education programmes to prioritise the statutory requirements in order to gain qualified teacher status. My colleagues and I are now busy preparing the annual ‘Health Day’ for 2014-15 that over 400 trainees attend. They will take what they learn on the day into the classroom during their school placements where they perform further tasks to help cement their learning. The health day is supported and facilitated by national and local health education experts. The trainees will learn about health related issues specific to primary or secondary/further education (FE) these include topics such as sex and relationship education, emotional health and wellbeing, drug education and healthy eating.

Our research has shown that this training results in great improvements in trainee teachers’ confidence and competence in dealing with certain aspects of health education. The public health white paper Healthy Lives, Healthy People emphasises the role of teachers in promoting healthy lifestyles and preventing risky behaviours among young people. Coupled with responsibility for public health moving from the NHS to, in part, local authorities – communities and, in particular, schools will become even more important in addressing health needs and inequalities in their local areas.”

The researchers emphasise that they would like to conduct further studies surveying mentors and tutors in placement schools, as well as trainee teachers themselves. In addition, they would like to conduct research into the feasibility and effectiveness of inter-agency and inter-disciplinary collaborations to support health education in ITE. They have also recently been awarded a research grant of £56,630 from the Leverhulme Trust to carry out further work within the field of ITE and health education. This is an 18 month research project to follow up trainee teachers from Southampton who receive training in health and well-being as part of their PGCE training courses.

The full paper: Are trainee teachers being adequately prepared to promote the health and well-being of school children? A survey of current practice, can be found on the Journal of Public Health website: http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/28/pubmed.fdt103.full  

Dr Jenny Byrne’s interview with BBC Solent for ‘Drivetime’ begins 55 minutes into the programme and can be listened to via this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01s1xp0

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