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Reflexive Processes on Health and Sustainability in Education

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Health, Well-Being and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 10019

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Julia Caroline Arnold

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Guest Editor

Centre for Science and Technics Education, School of Education, FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Basel, Switzerland
Interests: science education; motivation and knowledge in science/environment/health contexts

Prof. Dr. Sarah Dannemann

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Guest Editor

Generals Studies in primary Education (Sachunterricht), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Interests: students’ conceptions; scientific and students’ understanding of health; model of educational reconstruction; teacher education

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In industrialized nations, chronic or noncommunicable diseases (NCD, e.g., cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, or type 2 diabetes) are the leading cause of mortality in the world, according to the WHO. However, communicable diseases, such as the current global COVID pandemic, are also currently posing major problems for the world's population. To meet these challenges (and others), the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) includes Target 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. This aim has to be addressed interdisciplinarily and from different perspectives, but consistently incorporating the perspective of sustainability and intergenerational equity. Since human health and environmental health are inseparably intertwined, this also means making choices that are environmentally sustainable and shaping the health system in terms of sustainable health.

In school, biology education allows one to combine three important facets related to this aim: 1) the biological system perspective on health looking at the individual, as well as inter-subjective and ecological interrelations; 2) a specific scientific methodological view that allows one to understand the way of gaining knowledge in studies and to critically deal with statements on (social) media; and 3) an educational conception that includes knowledge, as well as abilities to act and reflect on (sustainable) health matters. In this respect, biology education can play a significant role in developing knowledge and abilities related to health and sustainability.

In order to provide frameworks both for biology education research and for designing teaching and school-wide concepts, specific educational conceptions are needed that recognize individual health matters as well as societal relations. In this Special Issue, we will discuss (various) conceptions of health promotion from the perspective of biology education, as well as empirical results on the application and impact of these conceptions. These conceptions and their implications have previously been discussed at various national and international conferences.

Dr. Julia Caroline Arnold
Prof. Dr. Sarah Dannemann
Guest Editors

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 submissions that pass pre-check are 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 single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). 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

SDG3
sustainable health
health
biology education
decision-making
knowledge and abilities

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 1200 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Science|Environment|Health, One Health, Planetary Health, Sustainability, and Education for Sustainable Development: How Do They Connect in Health Teaching?

by Benedikt Heuckmann and Albert Zeyer

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12447; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912447 - 29 Sep 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2857

Abstract

In this paper, we explore Science|Environment|Health, One Health, Planetary Health, and Sustainability/Education for Sustainable Development in the context of the 2030 Agenda as four major frameworks that take a step toward investigating health from different angles to tackle the grand challenges that lie ahead of humanity. In most of these frameworks, the topic of health is no longer limited to the health of humans; it also encompasses the health of ecosystems and planetary systems. Therefore, our ways of teaching and discussing health in science education may need to be adjusted. To this aim, we first shortly characterize the four frameworks and then analyze the concepts of health, the contributing sciences, and the role of values in the frameworks. In our opinion, three main questions have to be settled: (1) Which concept of health lies at the root of each framework? (2) Which sciences should be considered when teaching about health, and what role will they take in an interdisciplinary, integrative approach and under complexity restraints? (3) What is the role of values in these frameworks, and how can the is–ought fallacy be avoided? We finally discuss our findings in light of the concept of two-eyed seeing in science education. This concept helps us disentangle and sharpen the three main questions and draw implications for teaching about health in school science. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reflexive Processes on Health and Sustainability in Education)

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24 pages, 313 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Virology in Schoolbooks—A Comprehensive Analysis of Austrian Biology Textbooks for Secondary School and Implications for Improvement

by Nina Hoffer, Sabrina Lex and Uwe K. Simon

Sustainability 2022, 14(18), 11562; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811562 - 15 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1420

Abstract

Virology has gained much attention in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other recurrent epidemics/pandemics such as Ebola, zika, or now, monkeypox. We have analysed all recent biology schoolbooks for secondary school approved for the Austrian market. Our aim was to find out whether virological content was presented comprehensively, comprehensibly, and in an error-free manner. This also relates to visual representations of viruses, processes related to virology (e.g., replication), and references to daily life. Furthermore, we looked for tasks related to virology that may help students to deepen their newly acquired knowledge and/or to put it into practice, either by hands-on experimentation or transfer tasks. We examined 97 books (76 books for lower secondary and 21 books for upper secondary school). For this analysis, we developed and tested a coding matrix accompanied with a comprehensive coding guide to facilitate reproducible and reliable ratings. Since inter-rater reliability was found to be very high, both the coding matrix and guide can be recommended for further studies in this field. Overall, the virological content provided was free of errors, with the text and illustrations being mostly comprehensive and comprehensible. This was expected, since all Austrian school books must be approved by a governmental commission. However, individual books even for the same target (age) group differed widely in content and detail. In particular, few books clearly differentiated between viruses and bacteria, clarified that viruses are non-living and emphasized that antibiotics are ineffective against viruses. Yet precisely such knowledge is essential to enable students to make scientifically based decisions in health-related situations, especially for the prevention and treatment of viral diseases (e.g., whether to take antibiotics when suffering from a viral disease). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reflexive Processes on Health and Sustainability in Education)

Other

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22 pages, 432 KiB

Open AccessPerspective

‘Sleep Blindness’ in Science Education: How Sleep Health Literacy Can Serve as a Link between Health Education and Education for Sustainable Development

by Anna Beniermann, Martin Glos, Heike Schumacher, Ingo Fietze, Stephan Völker and Annette Upmeier zu Belzen

Sustainability 2023, 15(16), 12217; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151612217 - 10 Aug 2023

Viewed by 2228

Abstract

Sleep disorders are risk factors for diseases such as dementia or diabetes, and cause enormous costs. Despite the crucial impacts of sleep on human health, there is little to no research on sleep and health in the field of science education. Although health education is an overarching goal of science education in school, the topic of sleep is rarely addressed. In the related field of medical education, empirical studies shed light on the impact of school projects concerning sleep health but are yet unrecognized by science education research. Systematic reviews demonstrate the effectiveness of school-based sleep education programs for increasing sleep knowledge but show contradicting findings regarding the impact on sleep behaviors. Lacking knowledge about healthy sleep is related to unhealthy sleep behavior. In this perspective article, we prepare the topic of sleep for the field of science education by presenting the state of research concerning sleep education. Using the connection between light pollution and sleep disruption, we present a concept of sleep health literacy in science education, argue for the implementation of sleep health literacy in science education curricula, and describe how the topics of sleep and light can serve as a link between health education and Education for Sustainable Development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reflexive Processes on Health and Sustainability in Education)

47 pages, 2130 KiB

Open AccessSystematic Review

What Skills Do Addiction-Specific School-Based Life Skills Programs Promote? A Systematic Review

by Tobias Leiblein, Eva-Maria Bitzer and Ulrike Spörhase

Sustainability 2022, 14(22), 15234; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142215234 - 16 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2352

Abstract

In school-based addiction prevention, life skills programs (LSPs) have been established since the 1990s. The scientific evidence regarding program effectiveness is in parts unclear. This review links life skills not to behavioral outcomes but to three facets of the self: the affective evaluative, the dispositional & dynamic, and the cognitive descriptive facet of the self. This complements the evidence on behavioral outcomes. In a systematic literature search we have identified drug-specific life skills programs in German language and their evaluation studies. We have mapped the instruments used to assess effectiveness of the LSP on three facets of the self, which are site of action of intrapersonal skills. We identified six comparable life skills programs that have been evaluated at least once. In five of these programs, different facets of life skills have been assessed with a total of 38 different measurement instruments. We found that improvements in affective evaluative and dispositional & dynamic facets of the self could be stimulated by LSPs, complementing previous evidence focusing on behavioral outcomes. Conclusion: Numerous instruments have been used that are not directly comparable but can be categorized by facets of the self. As a result, it is found that life skills programs can have an impact on building attitude and the shaping of intrapersonal skills. Interpersonal competencies such as communication skills and empathy have not been measured. Furthermore, a consensus on measurement instruments for life skills should be found. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reflexive Processes on Health and Sustainability in Education)

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