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

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.