Shades of criticality in health and wellbeing education

ABSTRACT

Perspectives and approaches to health and wellbeing education vary considerably over time and space even as certain contextual and critical features may be maintained. Through an analysis of a range of studies published in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, we illustrate what unites as much as divides various positions taken by their authors through a focus on which assumptions they proceed from, those they may seek to problematise, and which they try to rework through their scholarship. Our analysis centres on two key questions: (a) the critical question of health education, and (b) the question of critical health education. To advance our analysis, we draw on insights from critical literature review techniques and the need to problematise research topics and assumptions that frame and guide their selection and investigation. Key outcomes include six thematic categories and the key parameters for identifying various degrees of light and shade to the criticality within these studies, including their thresholds. We conclude with a reflection on the significance of determining the object of critique during curriculum studies, and the continuing need to inquire into, rather than bypass, what counts as critical in health and wellbeing education.

KEYWORDS:

• Health education
• wellbeing
• schools
• curriculum
• critical

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond [AUFF-2011-734-065].

Notes on contributors

Nis Langer Primdahl

Nis Langer Primdahl is a PhD fellow at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds an MA in Philosophy and is currently working on his PhD dissertation Contemplative Turn in Danish Classrooms: Questioning the (un)intended effects of contemplative practices in Danish Schools.

Alan Reid

Alan Reid is an associate professor at Monash University in the Faculty of Education. He edits the international research journal, Environmental Education Research, and recently edited (with Justin Dillon) a reference collection on Environmental Education (in the Routledge series Critical Concepts in the Environment, 2017). Reid is editor of Curriculum and Environmental Education: perspectives, priorities and challenges (Routledge, 2018), and an associate editor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies.

Venka Simovska

Venka Simovska is a professor of school development, wellbeing and learning at Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research interests focus on discourses within school-based health and wellbeing education and promotion; the paradigm of health (wellbeing) promoting schools; (post)critical educational theory; and participation and (dis)engagement. Simovska is editor (with Mannix McNamara) of Schools for Health and Sustainability: Theory, Research and Practice (Springer, 2015), and editor (with Ros McLellan and Carole Faucher) of Wellbeing and Schooling: Cross Cultural and Cross Disciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).