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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011) Marcus GRACE and Jacquie L. BAY Developing a pedagogy to support science for health literacy
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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011) Marcus GRACE and Jacquie L. BAY Developing a pedagogy to support science for health literacy
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Sustained health-related behavioural changes take a long time to measure, and LENScience and LifeLab continue to track past and present students. Early signs of modified attitudes and lifestyles are evident in data collected in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom to date. These data suggest that the programmes are having a sustained effect on perceptions of the relationship between diet in adolescence and future health of the individual and their potential offspring. They also indicate that the programmes are effecting change in understanding of the relationship between the nutritional environment during pregnancy and health in later life. Interview data suggests that the programmes offer the potential to support the role of students as change agents in their families. Full publication of these data is expected in 2012.
In this article we have stressed the prominence that science needs to play if we are to establish a generation of health literate citizens, capable of engaging in critical thinking and decision making resulting in transformative actions relating to health at an individual, family and community level. We have offered the NCD epidemic as a health related socio-scientific issue of global relevance which could be explored in all schools. We have provided examples of pedagogical strategies successfully employed to deliver science for health literacy in this context. The examples come from a project being implemented in settings at opposite ends of the world, and we hope they will inspire other science and health educators to develop teaching programmes appropriate to their own contextual settings.
Copyright (C) 2011 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 12, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2011). All Rights Reserved.
