Abstract

Due to increasing mental health issues among young people in Norway, and increasing challenges in schools, several initiatives have been taken in recent years to change a negative trend and promote health for the young population. Many initiatives are related to the educational context, such as introducing life mastery skills in the national curriculum and implementing health promotion measures in schools. One challenge regarding this work has been to find a common understanding of what it means to work on health promotion in school, and another challenge has been how to measure the effects of health promoting initiatives. These issues are addressed in the current study. Through engaged scholarship, or collaboration between researchers and practitioners from schools, a model has been developed, including examples of what health promotion practices in an educational context implies. The model is based on Antonovsky’s theory, sense of coherence (SOC) stating that to develop a strong sense of coherence, which makes a person robust to handle stressful events and, in other words, leads to coping, a situation must be perceived as a) comprehensible, b) manageable, and c) meaningful. These concepts have been operationalised to the following nine main principles: 1) acknowledgement, 2) trust, 3) respect, 4) mastery, 5) participation, 6) safety, 7) motivation, 8) relations, and 9) values. How these principles are applied in practice will be presented. In addition to developing a model for working on health promotion in school, a scale for measuring health promotion competence and practice has been developed and piloted in two rounds. The questionnaire included one section on competence, including 27 items, and one section on practice, including 27 items. Factor analyses for each section were performed to identify underlying variables in the dataset. Preliminary findings from the first round of piloting (n = 104) confirmed that there were underlying clusters and that items within each cluster measured the same phenomena. In the section on health promotion competence, the items clustered on a) knowledge and b) skills, and to a certain degree, some items clustered on c) attitudes. In the section on health promotion practice, the results were less clear, but to a certain degree, the items clustered on a) individual level (own role as teacher), b) group level (own role in relation to students) and c) system level (the school’s role). Based on these preliminary findings, the questionnaire was adjusted before the second round of piloting. The 27 items in the health promotion competence section were organized in three parts in accordance with the underlying factors. The number of items in the section on health promotion practice was reduced from 27 to 18. Results from the second round of piloting (n= 318) partly confirm the factor structure from the first piloting round. In line with health promotion theory, the questionnaire developed includes a focus on positive practices that promote health, meaning that negative statements, or reversed items, are not included. Thus, the questionnaire may also serve as a tool to help develop awareness among employees about what health promoting practices include. The operationalization of health promotion presented here provides a theoretical framework for creating a health promoting learning environment. The model developed, together with the questionnaire on health promotion competence and practice, may be useful tools that professional learning communities can apply to adjust their practice to meet the increasing challenges of mental health issues among the young population. Through moving towards a health promoting practice in schools, students may be supported to develop robustness and coping to deal with stressful situations.

Authors: May Olaug Horverak, Gerd Martina Langeland, Nadja Sophia Kühn,Øyvind Hellang, Migle Helmersen

Published in: World Congress on Education (2024)

  • Date of Conference: 26-28 August, 2024
  • DOI: 10.20533/WCE.2024.0015
  • Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-71-6
  • Conference Location: Churchill College, Cambridge, UK

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