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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011) Marcus GRACE and Jacquie L. BAY Developing a pedagogy to support science for health literacy
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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011) Marcus GRACE and Jacquie L. BAY Developing a pedagogy to support science for health literacy
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This foreword builds on the premise that many health issues are unavoidably socio-scientific issues impacting on the social and economic wellbeing of communities. The implication of this is that adolescent education should facilitate the development of lifelong learning skills that will support informed decision making relating to health at an individual, family and community level. To achieve this we must draw on behaviour change theories and transactional and transformative learning models which result in health-related changes in students’ understanding and beliefs about themselves and their social context, and long-lasting lifestyle changes (Mezirow, 2000, EU, 2009). This requires a pedagogical approach that develops an understanding of the science underpinning common health issues, social issues underpinning the determinants of health, and the skills to enable students to access and interpret information to make informed judgements regarding health and wellbeing over the life-course. The delivery of such education programmes is undoubtedly cross-curricular in nature, linking strongly into health education, physical education, science, humanities and technology curricula. When we consider the potential impact of the determinants of health on personal and societal well-being, the links into mathematics and economics curricula cannot be ignored. However in this paper we focus on the key curricular areas of science and health. Despite widespread acceptance that health matters form a natural part of these curricula, there currently exists a clear disconnect between scientific literacy and health literacy; indeed, these two concepts tend to reside within two separate bodies of literature. We unpack the concepts of scientific literacy and health literacy and suggest components of a bridging pedagogy which supports ‘science for health literacy’. In particular, we will focus on the significant challenge offered to teachers in the development of learning opportunities that allow students to explore the complex issues underpinning the global non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemic, an issue of significant and growing concern that we believe to be under-represented and poorly linked in school curricula. We view health literacy as a precondition for education for sustainable development and citizenship and propose that health literacy cannot be isolated from science literacy.
Copyright (C) 2011 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011). All Rights Reserved.
