Health and Wellbeing: Starting with a Critical Pedagogical Model

Abstract

There are many views on what constitutes health and wellbeing. What emerge are varying—and at times competing—discourses and recommended approaches for practice. Knowledge of these varying perspectives and the skills to critically assess their compatibility with social work values provides tools to social workers to assist in determining how to shape practice in a way that best focuses on health and wellbeing. A pedagogical model is reviewed that includes an overview of the six most dominant health paradigms: biomedicine, public health, biopsychosocial, social determinants of health, political economy, and holism.

Keywords:

• Health
• Wellbeing
• Pedagogy
• Model
• Social Work
• Epistemology
• Paradigms
• Education