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Health Prom J of Aust - 2025 - Scott - How Are We Preparing Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Teachers to Be Health257.83 kB
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
How Are We Preparing Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Teachers to Be Health Promotors? Examining Physical Activity, Sleep and Sun Safety in Initial Teacher Education
Health Promotion Journal of Australia, Vol.36(2), pp.1-9
2025
PMID: 40038568
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
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UniSC News (Tom Fowles)Abstract
Issue Addressed
While physical activity, sleep and sun safety (PASS) have been identified as important modifiable health behaviours and schools and teachers have been identified as vital for health promotion and primary prevention; little is known about how initial teacher education programs across Australia and New Zealand (NZ) are preparing future teachers to deliver PASS-related curriculum. This study investigated teacher educators' insights on their programs and their graduate's preparedness to plan and teach PASS education.
Methods
Teacher educators (n = 98) from Australia and NZ completed a 30-item electronic survey. Quantitative tests were used to explore differences in the data.
Results
Consistently, time spent on physical activity far outweighed sun safety and sleep with many programs having little or no sleep or sun safety content. Of concern, many indicated they did not agree, or know if their graduates were confident to plan and teach physical activity (28%), sun safety (42%) or sleep (75%) lessons, nor were they aware of the related guidelines, health benefits and risks.
Conclusions
Findings reveal significant variance in what is being offered in Australian and NZ initial teacher education programs. Findings highlight potential gaps in graduate's knowledge of various health behaviours and confidence to plan and teach related content and their preparedness for health promotion.
So What?
Findings highlight a need to include more targeted health promotion education in initial teacher education in Australia and NZ to enable teachers to deliver consistent health promotion messages when they enter school settings to properly support young people's health needs.
Details
- Title
- How Are We Preparing Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Teachers to Be Health Promotors? Examining Physical Activity, Sleep and Sun Safety in Initial Teacher Education
- Authors
- Joseph J. Scott (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Education and Tertiary AccessAlexandra P. Metse - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - PsychologyBronwen M. McNoe - University of OtagoSally Blane - Cancer Council Western AustraliaSharyn Chin Fat - Cancer Council QueenslandJustine Osborne - Cancer Council VictoriaNicky Muir - Cancer Council Victoria
- Publication details
- Health Promotion Journal of Australia, Vol.36(2), pp.1-9
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1002/hpja.70022
- ISSN
- 2201-1617; 1036-1073
- PMID
- 40038568
- Copyright note
- © 2025 The Author(s). Health Promotion Journal of Australia published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Health Promotion Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
- Grants
- Reducing young people's risk of skin cancer through innovative targeted teacher education, 0980027415, University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia, Sunshine Coast) - UniSC
- Organisation Unit
- Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; School of Education and Tertiary Access; Cancer Research Cluster; School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991110044002621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
31 Record Views
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- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
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Source: InCites