Health literacy and the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education: a marriage of convenience or a process of empowerment?

Abstract

The concept of ‘health literacy’ is becoming increasingly prominent internationally, and it has been identified as one of the five key propositions that underpin the forthcoming Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (ACHPE). The ACHPE is one of few national curricula to explicitly refer to health literacy, identifying it as an empowerment strategy that involves young people taking action to promote their own and others' good health. Given ongoing concerns surrounding the efficacy of Health Education, coupled with the privileged status of literacy education in contemporary schooling, health literacy could also be viewed as an unsurprising marriage of convenience between health and dominant education discourses. This paper explores health literacy from socio-historical, theoretical and future-focused perspectives. In so doing, it discusses some possible implications, challenges and opportunities that we could expect once the ACHPE is mobilised in schools.

Keywords:

• health literacy
• health and physical education
• Australian curriculum

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank valued colleagues and the anonymous reviewers who have provided invaluable guidance and feedback during the writing of this paper.