The art & science of student assessment is often an overlooked element of Health, Personal & Social Development education. Generally, we compete with the traditional demand for students marks in academic subjects with a call for more holistic assessment practices but we rarely examine what we are suggesting students learn beyond the basic facts (literacy) of health. Issue #31, 2019 of ASCD Express gives us some insights as it covers the debate within education about moving to student evaluation without grades and marks. The articles in this issue suggest that "High-quality feedback should describe work against criteria students themselves understand and suggest attainable next steps at the appropriate level of challenge, points and averages mask what students actually know and are able to do, a straightforward reporting system gives students the information to take ownership of learning by measuring their performance relative to defined standards and making mastery, not points, the reward for your students...." Read more...
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The unique challenges related to building teams of teachers (and others) to improve programs and school practices has been discussed in educational research but less in health and social development. There is very little planning time in the teacher's work day, the regular working environment (the classroom) is isolated from other adults, teacher backgrounds are often derived solely from their previous experiences as students and their relatively low professional status makes other prone and willing to "fix the teachers" as their primary strategy.This is why the July 2019 issue of Educational Leadership should be of interest to school health & development advocates. The issue examines the barriers to teacher teams, "collective efficacy" as a driving concept, ensuring that team meetings work for teachers and treating teachers like professionals. Read more.....
An article in Issue #3, 2016 of Stress & Health reports that German teachers are experiencing a higher rate of mental health problems than the general population due to a greater imbalance between effort and rewards in their careers. "High degrees of premature retirement among teachers warrant investigating the occupational burden and the mental health status of this profession.A sample of 1074 German teachers participated in this study. Two samples of the general population (N = 824 and N = 792) were used as comparison groups. Work distress was assessed with the Effort–Reward-Imbalance questionnaire, and mental health problems were measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Teachers reported more effort–reward imbalance (M = 0.64) compared with the general population (M = 0.57), and they perceived more mental health problems (GHQ: M = 12.1) than the comparison group (M = 9.5). Moreover, teachers working full time reported more mental health problems. The higher degree of effort–reward imbalance and the level of mental health problems warrant preventive measures." Read More>> (This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN)
(From the ISHN Member information service) An analysis of three school-based initiatives in AIDS/HIV education based on a rights-based approach suggests that we are left with some unfinished business. The article prompting this discussion appears in Issue #1, 2015 of Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning. The authors suggest that "Over the past 25 years, there has been growing investment in concepts of rights in the areas of HIV prevention, care and treatment, including HIV- and AIDS-related education delivered in schools. Despite this increasing commitment to the notion of rights, few efforts appear to have been made to understand the varying conceptions of rights that underpin different kinds of initiatives. Engaging with a multi-disciplinary body of literature on the issue of rights, and through a focus on three rights-informed HIV- and AIDS-related initiatives, this paper seeks to address this gap in the current literature. In so doing, it also examines a central tension within human rights discourse, namely between the construal of rights as shared and universally applicable to all human beings, while being created in and limited by the location in which they were elaborated, as well as by the language used to formulate them. More explicit engagement with the diversity of approaches made possible through a commitment to human rights may facilitate forms of HIV- and AIDS-related education that are more meaningful to young people." Or, in our view, a rights-based approach may create political and social barriers to the expansion and improvement of sex education in schools where the understandings about human rights differ from those articulated by experts and UN agencies. Read more>>
(From UCLA School Mental Health Project) A new book in January 2015 by the UCLA School Mental Health Project makes a cogent argument for transforming the fragmented delivery of various support services so that they truly support student learning and equitable educational opportunity. The authors begin with this " external and internal barriers to learning and teaching have continued to pose some of the most pervasive and entrenched challenges to educators across the country, particularly in chronically low performing schools. Failure to directly address these barriers ensures that (a) too many children and youth will continue to struggle in school, and (b) teachers will continue to divert precious instructional time to dealing with behavior and other problems...Transforming student and learning supports is key to school improvement. To this end, this book incorporates years of research and prototype development and a variety of examples from trailblazing efforts" They go on to say "Mapping a school district’s existing efforts to address problems yields a consistent picture of many practices and fragmented, piecemeal, and usually disorganized activity (as illustrated below). The range of such learning and student supports generally is extensive and expensive". They also go on to describe the cause and this is where we might disagree: "Underlying the fragmentation is a fundamental policy problem, namely the long-standing marginalization of student and learning supports in school improvement policy and practice. Thus, most efforts to directly use student and learning supports to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students are not a primary focus in school improvement planning. " In our view, a major cause of the fragmentation is that the mandates and funding of the various health, social and other services is done in a sporadic, competitive and disjointed manner. Part of the transformation will require that health and other ministries re-organize their work so that they are accountable for providing consistent support for students most at risk, rather than always worrying about the optimal health of all students in universal programs. There have often been attempts to insert health outputs and outcomes into school system accountability. In our view, this should be a two-way street, with health and other systems being accountable for a reasonable number of educational outputs, particularly for more vulnerable students. Read more>>
In an article published in Issue #1, 2015 of the Journal of School health, one of the founders of the school health movement, Lloyd Kolbe calls for greater collaboration between the health and education sectors in the United States so that school health programs can be more effective and sustainable. The article from the former Director of the CDC school health program identifies numerous organizations in the US that can work together, outlining their potential contributions. Readers may recall that ISHN has been promoting a significantly new approach to such partnerships in its work with leading global education organizations representing school district/education ministry officials (ASCD) and teachers.(Education International). Dr. Kolbe's call to action is a reminder of the need for action rather than platitudes. Read more>>
(From the ISHN Member information service) A Chicago-based organization, the Healthy Schools Campaign, has emerged on the national scene in the United States and is working hard to influence national policy decisions. Working from a background paper/initiative, Health in Mind, HSC has formed an influential group of organizational and government leaders called the National Collaborative on Education and Health, with an impressive list of members The NCEH has gained access to the US Surgeon General's Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health (Prevention Advisory Group), which was created by the Affordable Care Act to bring a non-Federal perspective to the Strategy’s policy and program recommendations and to its implementation.
On August 24, 2014, the NCEH hosted the first meeting of its Health Systems Working Group, an important step towards identifying strategies for redesigning health delivery systems to meet the health needs of students. The Health Systems Working Group members bring together over 25 health and education leaders who will work together over the next four months to identify strategies to increase collaboration between the health and education sectors to support the delivery of school health services and programs. Some of the key questions this group will address include: • How can schools be incorporated into delivery system reforms; other new models of care emerging from the Affordable Care Act; and other innovations being tested for the delivery of physical and mental health services, health promotion and prevention? • How can the health care system better support schools in creating the conditions of health for students? • What new models of practice are needed in both the health sector and schools to support an integrated delivery of care model? • What type of guidance needs to be shared with the health and education sectors to promote collaboration? At the first meeting of the working group, participants discussed a brief discussion paper describing the opportunities presented by the Affordable Care Act that can be used to promote collaboration between the health and education sectors. The paper also discussed the need for a model that leverages these opportunities. These examples illustrated how preventive and primary care examples where hospitals/health care organizations from Portland, St. Paul, Madison, Grand Rapids, Deleware, Austin, Cincinnati and Kentucky are working closely with schools. Commentary: This is an exciting development within the United States. Coinciding with the release of the updated US school health promotion model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the educational leaders organization, ASCD, these policy level discussions could be connected to the renewed program and practitioner led efforts. They could also be built upon previous substantive work done on school health care services and centres in the US. Hopefully, these high level policy/advocate discussions will be connected firmly to the extensive history of programmic excellence. Secondly, we hope that the discussions of this NCEH Working Group can be linked to broader discussions of how the health systems can support promotion and prevention policies and programs as well as preventive care through schools. As we know from the many different successful models of school health promotion in the US and elsewhere in the world, several aspects the public health functions of coordination, promotion, prevention, protection and surveillance can all be accomplished by working with and within school systems. As well, we hope that these policy/advocacy discussions on US health care-school programs can address the barriers and facilitators that health systems face when maintaining and sustaining long-term health promotion approaches such as school health. There is constant pressure on the health promotion sectors of health systems to respond to the latest health/social problem of the day. With scarce resources often drawn to treatment and emergency health, the health promotion sector is often forced to fund activities on a selected list of issues rather than on health overall. While this underlying problem of scarce resources will never disappear, there are systemic changes that can be made to structures, staffing and decision-making to ensure continuity and ongoing relationships/commitments to non-health sectors such as schools. A research agenda on such barriers and facilitators has already been proposed by a recent North American symposium of education and health leaders. Another practical suggestion coming out of that symposium was greater and sustained investments in school nursing. If school nurses can be mandated to the full scope of their professional roles, then they can be be essential glue that keeps school health care connected to school health promotion and to the many specific prevention activities. A third hope for these high powered US discussions is that they take the time to truly understand the core mandates, concerns and constraints of school systems so that they can truly motivate and engage school systems in health promotion. Educators will happily accommodate health services in their schools. Indeed, this is often the first thing that school administrators ask for. Educators can provide all sorts of other health promoting support in their teaching, caring for children, working with parents and community leaders and more. But, as recent research is showing, they are reluctant to do that unless the health systems modify their approach to ensure that is it based on systemic, long-term strategies. ISHN and ASCD have gathered this recent research into a global discussion of how health (and other systems) need to integrate their programs within education systems. Insights and evidence-based and experience-tested ideas from the global discussion, including a consensus statement, a background paper and International Discussion Group are all sources that we hope American and other national leaders will not ignore. (From the ISHN Member information service) A blog post noted this week reports an another trend in education, another one that should catch the attention of advocates of health and personal/social development education because of the ongoing competition for time in over-crowded curricula. ASCD, a leading educational organizations notes the trend "Lessons involving STEAM -- science, technology, engineering, arts and math -- are catching on nationwide, including in schools in Florida, Ohio and Texas. The concept also has drawn support from businesses and government. Still, some say the effects of STEAM on student achievement remains unclear. " STEM education–that’s science, technology, engineering, and math–has gotten an increasing amount of buzz over the past few years. And now, there’s a twist on STEM: the addition of the arts, making it STEAM. Supporters say a more focused inclusion of the arts helps kids become creative, hands-on learners by sparking innovation. This fits with the calls for "21st Century Learning from business and other leaders, where innovation and creativity are increasingly valued as a business, enterprenurial skill. Read more>>
(From the ISHN Member information service) An August 19, 2014 posting to the Teachers Blog from Education Week discusses the "the Unwritten Job Descriptions of Teachers in High-Needs Schools" and thereby underlines one of the challenges and dilemmas of their daily work and professional careers. The author, a woman, discusses her "worst class" and how the pre-dominantly male students in a class in a high needs, ubran school in a poor neighbourhood challenged her, her female co-teacher an dmost other authority figures in the school. She adds " A couple of the guys had terrible tempers, and managing their angry and unpredictable outbursts made me feel like I was walking on eggshells in my own classroom. When the principal and other higher-ups from the Board of Education would come in, instead of feigning interest in the class-work (as most groups of students would have, under those circumstances), they'd ask, "Why are these people here? Tell them to leave," as though we all spoke some other language that our visitors would not understand." She then describes the dramatic changes to their behaviours when a male teacher replaced her female colleague in the team teaching assignment. " In some way, we had become "mom and dad" (albeit, extremely hetero-normatively) for these guys. It was not only evident in their antics of trying to play one of us off the other; the young men in our class could sometimes be calmed down by "man-to-man" talks in the hallway with my team teacher, after which they'd come to me for hugs, band-aids, snacks, what-have-you."Years later, reflecting on that year, the female teacher realized that the students in that class had needed them as surrogate parents and that the real needs of those students were based on the need for secure social attachments with adults. She then briefly cites some of the recent research on this and criticizes the current efforts in the US to see education as a business, as a competition and as a workplace for students rather than a home away from home. Read the blog article here.
All this is not very new, any teacher can tell you about the kids in their class with the same needs. What was significant to me in reading the blog commentary was how the writer argues that " For teachers, this represents an added layer of responsibility, one for which we can't expect recognition within our formal evaluations, but which is nonetheless a vital component of doing our jobs well...particularly in high-needs schools in poor areas, where children are often coming from unsteady home lives.' While respecting and even agreeing that view as a former teacher, I am struck by the constant barrage of attacks on teachers these days. More testing, more accountability for students progress regardless of their effort or their families contribution, introduction of term-limited teacher licenses, unilateral legislative attacks on their bargaining agents, reductions in their pensions and so on. In what other profession, in what other industry, in what other corporation would the authorities really expect their employees to stay faithful to their altruistic, additional, uncompensated roles and additional unrecognized responsibilities, especially when assigned to the worst assignments?. Really. And then we have the well-meant, checklists, teacher-proof instructional programs and the fix-the-teacher "professional" development programs from the health and social program advocates constantly knocking on the school door.... This article and our additional comments here present one of the aspects of our global discussion of why the health and social sectors need to step back from their current appeals to schools and seek a new path that can lead to a systematic and teacher aware approach to the integration of these programs within the constraints, concerns and core mandates of education systems. Join us in our on-going, International Discussion Group and series of global symposiums. (From the ISHN Member information service) Many of the news items identified this week related to education ministries turning their focus on job skills training and aboriginal education/students. In Canada, the education and labour ministers agreed on a national plan that will redirect school attention to job training in response to the recent economic downturn. In the US, the news media has been reporting on recent announcements on their Indian education strategy, training to encourage equitable access to excellent educators for schools in poor communities and a summit with business leaders. In England and Scotland, we have similar attention on youth who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) via reports and news releases.In the same week, health advocates distributed studies about the linkages between health and learning. If the health system is to persuade educators to accept more ownership for health programs, they will need to respond directly and specifically to these education policy directions and not simply make the general argument that healthy kids learn better or that health and educational achievement are linked. Read more>>
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