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Social Sciences
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Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology
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Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 March 2017) | Viewed by 51362

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Emma Rich

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department for Health, University of Bath, Claverton Down Rd, Bath, Somerset BA2 7AY, UK
Interests: body pedagogies; critical digital health studies; public pedagogy; sociocultural dimensions of obesity discourse; eating disorders; sociology of health and illness

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue calls for papers across a range of disciplines to explore the spaces, sites and processes of learning within and through health technologies. In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the development and use of health technologies, particularly those designed to help individual monitor and regulate their health. These include diagnostic medical devices, commercial mobile, and wearable technologies (often used for self-tracking) through to social media platforms and websites. This Special Issue will focus on advancing pedagogically informed understandings of these technologies and the plethora of ways in which people can learn about their bodies and health practices. In doing so, the papers will address questions such as how do we come to know and understand our bodies and health through digital pedagogies? As digital technologies provide the means through which users can become producers of health knowledge, what are the points of tension, possibility and resistance through the public pedagogies of critical health knowledge?  How do these pedagogies make possible new subjectivities or forms of embodiment?  How are technologies shaping the education of health professionals? This Special Issue will explore these phenomena and will consider the implications of technologies for developing critical health pedagogies. Papers are invited that address the pedagogic processes of a range of health technologies, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Technologies, Biopower and the educative force of digital health promotion
  • Web 2.0/3.0 and the production of new health knowledge
  • Public Pedagogy and health technologies
  • Methodological approaches
  • Body pedagogies representation and management of digitised bodies (including self-tracking and quantified self)
  • Disrupting and resisting health knowledge through digital pedagogies
  • Technology and embodied learning
  • Health professionals, education and technology

Dr. Emma Rich
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Digital technologies
  • Pedagogy
  • Health
  • Public pedagogy
  • Education
  • Embodiment
  • Learning

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 494 KiB  
Article
Young People’s Perspectives on and Experiences of Health-Related Social Media, Apps, and Wearable Health Devices
by Victoria A. Goodyear and Kathleen M. Armour
Soc. Sci. 2018, 7(8), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7080137 - 13 Aug 2018
Cited by 33 | Viewed by 10388
Abstract
It has been reported from numerous international and socio-economic contexts that young people are becoming increasingly interested in and/or using social media, apps, and wearable devices for their health. Yet, there are few robust empirical accounts on the types of health-related information young [...] Read more.
It has been reported from numerous international and socio-economic contexts that young people are becoming increasingly interested in and/or using social media, apps, and wearable devices for their health. Yet, there are few robust empirical accounts on the types of health-related information young people find, select, and use, the reasons for their choices, and how young people use these technologies in a way that influences their health-related knowledge and behaviors. This paper synthesizes findings from three separate projects that investigated over 1600 young people’s (age 13–19) perspectives on and experiences of health-related social media, apps, and wearable health devices. The findings show that young people are both critical and vulnerable users and generators of digital health technologies. Many young people experience a range of positive benefits for their physical activity, diet/nutritional, and body image related behaviors. Yet there are a number of risks, and young people report on the power of digital health technologies to shape, influence, and change their health-related behaviors. The paper concludes by providing new and evidence-based direction and guidance on how relevant adults (including teachers, parents/guardians, health professionals/practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers) can better understand and support young people’s engagement with digital health technologies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology)
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256 KiB  
Article
Digital Ecologies of Youth Mental Health: Apps, Therapeutic Publics and Pedagogy as Affective Arrangements
by Simone Fullagar, Emma Rich, Jessica Francombe-Webb and Antonio Maturo
Soc. Sci. 2017, 6(4), 135; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6040135 - 06 Nov 2017
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 8993
Abstract
In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy [...] Read more.
In this paper, we offer a new conceptual approach to analyzing the interrelations between formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental (ill) health with a specific focus on digital health technologies. Our approach builds on an understanding of public pedagogy to examine the pedagogical modes of address (Ellsworth 1997) that are (i) produced through ‘expert’ discourses of mental health literacy for young people; and (ii) include digital practices created by young people as they seek to publicly address mental ill health through social media platforms. We trace the pedagogic modes of address that are evident in examples of digital mental health practices and the creation of what we call therapeutic publics. Through an analysis of mental health apps, we examine how these modes of address are implicated in the affective process of learning about mental (ill) health, and the affective arrangements through which embodied distress is rendered culturally intelligible. In doing so, we situate the use of individual mental health apps within a broader digital ecology that is mediated by therapeutic expertise and offer original contributions to the theorization of public pedagogy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology)
247 KiB  
Article
New Kinds of (Ab)normal?: Public Pedagogies, Affect, and Youth Mental Health in the Digital Age
by Simone Fullagar, Emma Rich and Jessica Francombe-Webb
Soc. Sci. 2017, 6(3), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6030099 - 31 Aug 2017
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 8935
Abstract
Academic, policy, and public concerns are intensifying around how to respond to increasing mental health problems amongst young people in OECD countries such as the UK and Australia. In this paper we make the case that public knowledge about mental health promotion, help-seeking, [...] Read more.
Academic, policy, and public concerns are intensifying around how to respond to increasing mental health problems amongst young people in OECD countries such as the UK and Australia. In this paper we make the case that public knowledge about mental health promotion, help-seeking, support and recovery can be understood as an enactment of public pedagogy—as knowledge practices and processes that are produced within and beyond formal spaces of learning. We explore the question of how new pedagogic modes of address are produced through digital technologies—social media, gamified therapies, e-mental health literacy, wearable technology—as they invite particular ways of knowing embodied distress as “mental illness or ill health.” The rapid growth of formal and informal pedagogical sites for learning about youth mental health raises questions about the affective arrangements that produce new kinds of (ab)normal in the digital era. Through a posthumanist perspective that connects critical mental health studies and public pedagogy, this paper offers an original contribution that theorises pedagogic sites within the cultural formation of public-personal knowledge about mental (ill) health. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology)
246 KiB  
Article
Hashtag Recovery: #Eating Disorder Recovery on Instagram
by Andrea LaMarre and Carla Rice
Soc. Sci. 2017, 6(3), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6030068 - 29 Jun 2017
Cited by 33 | Viewed by 17601
Abstract
People who have experienced eating disorders are making sense of and managing their own health and recoveries, in part by engaging with digital technologies. We analyzed 1056 images related to eating disorder recovery posted to Instagram using the hashtags #EDRecovery, #EatingDisorderRecovery, #AnorexiaRecovery, #BulimiaRecovery [...] Read more.
People who have experienced eating disorders are making sense of and managing their own health and recoveries, in part by engaging with digital technologies. We analyzed 1056 images related to eating disorder recovery posted to Instagram using the hashtags #EDRecovery, #EatingDisorderRecovery, #AnorexiaRecovery, #BulimiaRecovery and #RecoveryWarrior to explore user performances of eating disorder recovery. We situated our analysis in a critical Deleuzian feminist frame, seeking to understand better how users represented, negotiated, or contested dominant constructions of “how to be recovered”. We identified a number of themes: A Feast for the Eyes, Bodies of Proof, Quotable, and (Im)Perfection. Within each of these themes, we observed links to social location, including the White, Western, middle-to-upper-class trappings that tether representations of eating disorder recovery to stereotypes about who gets eating disorders and may restrict access to the category of recovered. Documenting recovery online may be a way for those in recovery to chart progress and interact with similar others. However, recoveries presented on Instagram resemble stereotypical perspectives on who gets eating disorders and, thus, who might recover, subtly reinforcing a dominant recovery biopedagogy. These versions of recovery may not be available to all, limiting the possibility of engagement for people enacting and embodying diverse recoveries. Still, users make representational interventions into Instagram by making the struggles and challenges of eating disorder recovery visible to each other and to broader audiences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology)
233 KiB  
Article
Pedagogy as Possibility: Health Interventions as Digital Openness
by Vaike Fors and Sarah Pink
Soc. Sci. 2017, 6(2), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6020059 - 06 Jun 2017
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4780
Abstract
In this article we propose an approach to digital health tracking technologies that draws on design anthropology. This entails re-thinking the pedagogical importance of personal data as lying in how they participate in the constitution of new possibilities that enable people to learn [...] Read more.
In this article we propose an approach to digital health tracking technologies that draws on design anthropology. This entails re-thinking the pedagogical importance of personal data as lying in how they participate in the constitution of new possibilities that enable people to learn about, and configure, their everyday health in new ways. There have been two dominant strands in traditional debates in the field of pedagogy: one that refers to processes of teaching people to do things in particular ways; and another that seeks to enable learning. The first of these corresponds with existing understandings of self-tracking technologies as either unsuccessful behavioural change devices, or as providing solutions to problems that do not necessarily exist. When seen as such, self-tracking technologies inevitably fail as forms of intervention towards better health. In this article we investigate what happens when we take the second strand—the notion of enabling learning as an incremental and emergent process—seriously as a mode of intervention towards health through self-tracking technologies. We show how such a shift in pedagogical understanding of the routes to knowing these technologies offer creates opportunities to move beyond simplistic ideas of behavioural change as the main application of digital body monitoring in everyday life. In what follows, we first demonstrate how the disjunctures that arise from this context emerge. We then outline a critical response to how learning through life-tracking has been conceptualised in research in health and human-computer interaction research. We offer an alternative response by drawing on a processual theory of learning and recent and emerging research in sociology, media studies, anthropology, and cognate disciplines. Then, drawing on ethnographic research, we argue for understanding learning through the production of personal data as involving emplaced and non-representational routes to knowing. This, we propose, requires a corresponding rethinking of the epistemological status of personal data and what kind of knowledge it can be claimed to produce. Finally, we take up the implications of this and advance the discussion through a design anthropological approach, through which we refigure the interventional potential of such technologies as lying in their capacity to create possibilities for experiential, and often unspoken, ways of embodied and emplaced knowing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogies of Health: The Role of Technology)
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