“I can go teach for 30 minutes, and then I can tell” – The risk work of teachers in Danish secondary schools

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of health promotion and risk prevention in two public schools in Denmark, in this article I explore how schoolteachers carried out health risk work in the context of health promotion initiatives. I found that in order to manage the high degree of uncertainty that this kind of work entails, schoolteachers relied upon understandings of the relationship between social class, gender and ethnicity and of health outcomes which were based on their experience as well as the norms and stereotypical beliefs about the characteristics of specific social groups. This relationship between the social identities of the students and their future health took on an almost deterministic character among the teachers. Consequently, they perceived students’ future health as determined by factors that were largely beyond their control, making risk work seem like an impossible task.

Keywords:

• frontline workers
• risk work
• uncertainty
• health promotion
• schoolteachers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for excellent comments in the review process. Moreover, I would like to thank Gitte Sommer Harrits, Lasse Nielsen and Anne Binderkrantz for their comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. In Denmark, showering after physical activity has always been considered an important part of health education in schools, even among pre-pubescent children.

2. In most Danish schools, students bring lunch from home or buy lunch either in the school canteen or at a nearby supermarket when they are old enough to leave school grounds during recess (seventh form).