Hälsoarbetets möte med skolan i teori och praktik

Sammanfattning: The overall aim of the thesis is to investigate whether, and if so how, schools can be developed in a way that foregrounds a greater awareness of their role in the promotion of health.This thesis is about how the school itself, that is to say everything that can be subsumed within the notion of education, can promote health. The conclusions that can be drawn from the literature review can be summarised as follows: "poor health inhibits learning" and "poor learning inhibits health". Based on empirical investigations of health promotional projects in schools, pictures of both schools and related health promotion projects emerge.Health promotion work ranges in extent from traditional dissemination of knowledge about health to methods for establishing dialogues in everyday work and about democratic issues. Health promotion practice is close to, and can even be confused with, activities for school development. Health promotion work can equally well be used as a tool in school development strategies. Training in conducting dialogues between different categories of staff and between students and teachers can function as one such tool. One precondition for such an encounter to take place, however, is that a broad and non-traditional concept of health is used.Health promotion work can be understood as one amongst a number of democratic strategies. When focusing on participation and democracy, health promotion work and school development become proximate to one another, despite the fact that they adopt different approaches and perspectives when looking at the same area or problem. Drawing on Foucault, however, health promotion work and school development can either be understood as a way of manipulating and disciplining "low income children" or, alternatively, as a means of empowerment, participation, development of "voice" and deliberation. There is thus an extensive field for further research and a number of examples, are presented. Drawing on the work of Richardson, "writing" is my main interpretative strategy for understanding both the literature and the empirical data. My work is also informed by a "problem-based methodology" based on that developed initially by Robinson.