Health education and the teacher's role

Health education is receiving increased attention in English schools. A currently favoured method of incorporating it into the curriculum is to include relevant parts of it in all subjects. Some teachers however are unwilling to include a health education topic in their teaching. This paper looks at the possibility that this unwillingness could be associated with the way in which teachers view their role and what they think is the main aim of Health Education. Questions were put to 672 future teachers in training and 160 of their tutors. The teacher's role most frequently selected by both group was "to help all pupils make the most of their talents". Students intending to teach in primary schools provided a striking exception: 53.6% of them chose "to give pupils basic skills" as their first choice. The most popular first choice for the aims o health education was "to give information". Again primary teachers differed, however, the largest percentage selecting "to influence pupils' attitudes" (38.7%) as their first choice. The future teachers who saw their main role to be giving information in their own subject favoured the teaching of health education as a separate course, whereas those who chose "contributing to a total curriculum" as their essential role mainly opted for the inclusion of health education in all subjects. Not only view on the role of a teacher, but also specialist subject and type of school appeared to be related to views on health education.