Health Education Development/Topic: What is Health Education and where does it fit into Public Health and Rehabilitation Counseling?

What is Health Education and where does it fit into Public Health and Rehabilitation Counseling?
Please Note: There WILL BE a tutorial in this week. ALSO, if there is no link for a reference, please try a Google search; you will usually find what is listed. You will need to do some of your own work to collect resources. It is good practice. There will be some references that you have to obtain at a local library or through Google Books. This will be books for the most part.

Below, you will find learning outcomes for the topic. If you look below this section, you will find the introductory materials for each learning outcome. Before the Lectiorial session, find additional resources that allow you to elaborate a fuller answer to each of these questions above and the learning outcomes below. Be sure that you bring the source information to the Lectorial and be prepared to help solve a complex problem.

Learning Outcomes
The learning outcomes for this week will focus on introducing the subject and orienting you towards your tasks. General resources for achieving your assessment tasks will be outlined and discussed.

Upon completion of this topic, through your own investigations, group preparation, tutorial participation and ‘lectorial’ explorations, you should be able to:


 * 1) Describe the purpose of this subject to your friends and family and articulate a basic understanding of key concepts (e.g., social interdependence)
 * 2) Identify the key themes that you will engage and use during the semester to begin to solve problems in the Lectorials, Tutorials and the larger Context
 * 3) Outline the various tasks that you will be undertaking to both learn your craft and demonstrate your learning through group work and assessment tasks
 * 4) Explain to a class-mate what to do if they are experiencing difficulties in the subject or the course so that they can access and use appropriate resources

Questions for Reflection and Learning
The general question of this week can be asked in this way:

What is health education and what strategies and methods might be used?

Please scan through the key text on Health Education. Additionally, the following link will take you to the WHO site with information on this and related topics in the subject. Have a look around. The tracks are all quick reads with follow up references:


 * http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/7gchp/track2/en/

Lindstrom and Eriksson (2011), long-time advocates for a salutogenic approach to public health, provide interesting arguments for distinguishing health education, health literacy and what they term healthy learning. What do you think?


 * Lindstrom, B. and Eriksson, M. (2011) From health education to healthy learning: Implementing salutogenesis in educational science. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. 39(Suppl 6):85-92.

There are further questions:

'''What is social psychology? This is one of the underlying foundations of this subject.'''

Here is a link to an older, but useful explanation and elaboration that covers a number of the topics of use in the subject. It is a site developed by retired Professor George Boeree:


 * http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/socpsy.html

Here is a link to a practical application relating to Bush Fires...well worth the time to read:


 * http://www.bushfirecrc.com/managed/resource/applying_social_psychology.pdf

What is social interdependence?

This is a key aspect of social pscyhology and will be a supporting concept for cooperative learning (when you see a reference without a link, Google the title and you should be able to gain a copy; in some rare cases, you may have to use the library's Google Scholar portal).


 * Johnson, D.W. (2003) Social Interdependence: Interrelationships among thoery, research, and practice. American Psychologist. 58(11):934-945.

What is cooperative learning?

This is an important strategy that builds on social interdependence and leverages the power of the group.


 * Johnson, D.W. and Johnson, R.T. (2009) An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational Researcher. 38(5):365-379.

What is phenomenology?

This is a way of slowing ourselves down to have a good look at what makes up the very things that we take for granted each day in our living.


 * Seamon, D. A way of seeing people and place: Phenomenology in environment-behavior research. In, Wapner, S., Demick, J., Yamamoto, T. and Minami, H. (Eds.) (2000) Theoretical perspectives in environment-behavior research. New York: Plenum, pp.157-78. (Available at SSRN; use the Anonymous download option): http://ssrn.com/abstract=2214430.


 * Seamon, D. (2000) Phenomenology, place, environment, and architecture: A review of the literature (online article). Accessed last on 30 January 2014 @ http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/articles/2000_phenomenology_review.htm. (This article does not have :page numbers; so, please use the section numbers to refer to this in any in-text references)

Tutorial Preparation
Attendance taken: Five bonus points towards your overall mark are given for at least 80% attendance AND active participation (contributing to assessment and review of ‘Icebreakers’) during tutorials for weeks 3-12; if you are not able to meet this attendance requirement due to an ‘excused’ absence, alternate arrangements can be made by negotiation with the Subject Coordinator.

Housekeeping: Assignment to groups which allocate one potentially ‘vulnerable’ group to each member (see list below), Review of key survival skills, Introducing group contract, Introducing ‘Icebreakers’ as means of learning how to teach, Review of assessment criteria and forms and review processes. Potentially Vulnerable Groups: (a) Refugee students, (b) Students with disabilities, (c) Same sex attracted young adults, (d) Students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, (e) Students from rural and remote areas, and (f) International students. Be sure that you have identified key issues for their pathway through a tertiary setting and that you have identified resources offered by universities in general and by La Trobe University specifically.

Demonstration Icebreaker 1 (tutor): Macpherson, Cooperative Learning Group Activities, page 23, Three Part, Four Step Interview

Lectorial Preparation
Follow up the readings above and find some of your own. Also, look through the LMS site for this subject. If you have questions, use the forum to raise them so that others can also get answers to their concerns. The forum is asynchronous which means the staff will not always be monitoring it. We will check up on them frequently throughout the week.

Please scan the material at the head of this topic, the Essential Resources, Key Texts and Key Tools, as well as the video below before the 'Lectorial'.

Aiming Higher: Bloom & Vygotsky in the classroom