Healthy, happy and ready to teach, or why kids can’t learn from fat teachers: the discursive politics of school reform and teacher health

Unruly bodies: resistance, (in)action and hysteresis in a public health intervention

Schools have long been sites of public health intervention on the bodies of children. Increasingly, these interventions also act on the bodies of educators. Our case study is an intervention focused on the future health of children’s bodies (‘The Daily Mile’), which, we argue, also resulted in the surveillance of educators’ bodies. We draw on Bourdieu’s concept of hysteresis to explore how those bodies can become ‘unruly’ during implementation, in both resisting and being positioned as reluctant. Hysteresis, an under-utilised Bourdieusian concept, proved useful for exploring embodiment at a point when there were mismatches between habitus and the changing field of primary education. We show how the non-participation of some actors (e.g. teachers) was positioned as part of a broader resistance to health as a dominant value, whereas non-participation of less-privileged social actors (e.g. Teaching Assistants) was problematised in different ways. We argue that attending to moments of hysteresis, in which the changing symbolic values of physical capital become explicit, surfaces not just how dominant discourses (e.g. healthism) become reproduced in fields, but also how they change and are resisted, and with what effects.

Factors influencing healthy eating and physical activity amongst school staff

Limited research has explored teachers' perceptions of the role that schools can play in supporting staff members' healthy eating and physical activity. We aimed to identify barriers to healthy eating and physical activity within the school context, and to conclude on potential strategies for supporting staff to pursue these healthier behaviours. A convenience sampling strategy was used to recruit eleven schools from across Victoria to participate in this study, through contacts known to the researchers. The researchers facilitated focus groups involving staff from schools. Focus groups ranged in size from 3 to 12 participants (total 82) and lasted between 40 and 75 min. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes and sub-themes which were identified by staff as being important for healthy eating and physical activity. Schools that were perceived by staff to support healthy eating and physical activity offered opportunities, through initiatives and the physical environment, to support staff in accessing environments and facilities that supported them in being healthy. Further supportive elements were identified as a culture of health behaviours amongst staff members and leadership which supported health behaviours. Workplace stressors were reported to impact many aspects of staff health and wellbeing. Potential actions by schools to better support staff to pursue healthy eating and physical activity were identified from the themes emerging from this study. Alignment between these themes and elements of the World Health Organisation's healthy workplace framework suggest it will be important for health promotion models to account for these themes.

Researchers Supporting Schools to Improve Health: Influential Factors and Outcomes of Knowledge Brokering in the COMPASS Study

BACKGROUND

Although schools are considered opportune settings for youth health interventions, a gap between school health research and practice exists. COMPASS, a longitudinal study of Ontario and Alberta secondary students and schools (2012-2021), used integrated knowledge translation to enhance schools' uptake of research findings. Schools received annual summaries of their students' health behaviors and suggestions for action, and were linked with COMPASS knowledge brokers to support them in making changes to improve student health. This research examines the factors that influenced schools' participation in knowledge brokering and associated outcomes.

METHODS

School- and student-level data from the first 3 years of the COMPASS study (2012-2013; 2013-2014; 2014-2015) were used to examine factors that influenced knowledge brokering participation, school-level changes, and school-aggregated student health behaviors.

RESULTS

Both school characteristics and study-related factors influenced schools' participation in knowledge brokering. Knowledge brokering participation was significantly associated with school-level changes related to healthy eating, physical activity, and tobacco programming, but the impact of those changes was not evident at the aggregate student level.

CONCLUSIONS

Knowledge brokering provided a platform for collaboration between researchers and school practitioners, and led to school-level changes. These findings can inform future researcher-school practitioner partnerships to ultimately enhance student health.

Working against “pedagogic work”

Purpose

Equipping pre-service teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to teach health in socially critical ways requires pre-service teachers to examine and critique individualistic understandings of health. The purpose of this paper is to use Bourdieu’s concepts of the bodily hexis (the body as both separate from society (autonomous individuals) and the body as socially mediated (the influence of social forces upon individuals)) and pedagogic work to investigate the challenges of redressing the reproduction of individualistic conceptualizations of health in teacher education.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper focusses on an analysis of 31 pre-service teachers’ reflective writing in a foundational health education course, which sought to engage students in thinking about health in socially critical ways. A systematic and procedural form of document analysis was employed to examine and interpret data to investigate the ways in which students were engaging with the socially critical health discourses and course content.

Findings

The findings evidence that while students attempted to engage with and demonstrate their knowledge of a socially critical view of health, contradictions, or places where students unknowingly slipped into individualistic ways of thinking appeared frequently across the data. Findings are presented to elucidate challenges facing pre-service teachers in teaching the AC:HPE curriculum.

Practical implications

Findings suggest the need for teacher educators to employ pedagogic practices that can disrupt previous pedagogic work, serving to challenge and interrogate current constructions of health, and delve deeply into critical discourses through interchange and reflection.

Originality/value

This paper extends the current scholarship of Bourdieusian theoretical concepts in relation to critical health discourses and pedagogies.

Health status of primary school educators in low socio-economic areas in South Africa

BACKGROUND

Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) are major health concerns in South Africa. According to the life cycle approach NCD prevention strategies should target children. Educators are important external factors influencing behaviour of learners. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of selective NCD risk factors in educators of primary school learners.

METHODS

A cross-sectional design was used to assess the body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC), blood glucose (BG), cholesterol (BC), blood pressure (BP), perceived health and weight, and parental NCD history of 517 educators in the Western Cape of South Africa.

RESULTS

The sample included 40% males and 60% females; 64% urban and 36% rural, 87% were mixed ancestry, 11% white and 2% black. Mean age for the total group was 52 ± 10.1 years, BMI 30 ± 1.2 kg/m(2) (31% overweight, 47% obese), diastolic BP 84 ± 10.0 mmHg, systolic BP 134 ± 18.7 mmHg (46% high BP), BG 4.6 ± 2.3 mmol/L (2% high BG), BC 4.4 ± 0.9 (30.4% high BC) and WC 98 ± 14.1 cm for males (38% high WC) and 95 ± 15.3 for females (67% high WC). BMI was higher (p = 0.001) and systolic (p = 0.001) and diastolic (p = 0.005) BP lower in females. Rural educators were more obese (p = 0.001). BMI (p = 0.001) and systolic BP (p = 0.001) were lower in younger educators. Correct awareness of personal health was 65% for BP, 79.2% for BC and 53.3% for BG. Thirty-eight percent overweight/obese females and 33% males perceived their weight as normal.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study demonstrated a number of characteristics of educators in the two study areas that may influence their risk for developing NCDs and their potential as role models for learners. These included high levels of obesity, high blood pressure, high waist circumference, high cholesterol levels, and high levels of blood glucose. Furthermore, many educators had a wrong perception of their actual body size and a lack of awareness about personal health.