A5-4 Public health and life skills as an interdisciplinary theme in school

By working with the interdisciplinary theme of public health and life skills from a broad and holistic perspective, the school can be a natural arena for this theme and make important contributions.

Background: In the autumn of 2020, public health and life skills became an interdisciplinary theme in the school curriculum (LK2020) [1].
Methods: As part of my PhD project, ‘Life skills in school; with room for everyone and an eye for the individual’, at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, I did a discourse analysis focusing on five discourses in three background documents and LK2020 and a theoretical discussion on how schools can understand and practice this idea.
Results: My analysis shows that the curriculum and the background documents essentially address this topic by focusing on competence and specific topics the students will learn about. However, this minimises the holistic understanding of what creates health and life skills. Contrary to Meld. St. 28 [2], which also highlights the social perspective on life skills, the curriculum’s description of the topic is dominated by an individual perspective, while the rest of the curriculum has a broader perspective. In the theoretical discussion, I found that conditions in the individual, environment and society positively and negatively impact health and life skills. When looking at the main principles in pedagogy, I discovered that education and knowledge could essentially contribute to a better understanding of an individual perspective on students’ health and life skills. In comparison, a positive learning environment, relations and recognition contribute to the social perspective. From a societal perspective, I saw that the schools mandate and the social role became a relevant focus. However, based on my theoretical framework and the everyday life of the students, these perspectives are closely linked together. This shows how important it is for schools to work extensively and holistically regarding students’ health and life skills, especially as this is an interdisciplinary topic.
Conclusions: Suppose the schools can work with an interdisciplinary topic like this with a holistic perspective, both when it comes to their interpretation of the curriculum and everyday life; the school can become a natural arena when working with students’ health and life skills. That way, the schools’ emphasis on public health and life skills also has the potential to be something different from inflicting more on students to be achieved, which has previously been criticised by Madsen [3].
References
1. Utdanningsdirektoratet. Kunnskapsløftet 2020. Overordnet del – verdier og prinsipper for grunnopplæringen. 2018. See https://www.udir.no/lk20/overordnet-del/ (accessed 13 August 2022).
2. Meld. St. 28. Fag – Fordypning – Forståelse – En fornyelse av Kunnskapsløftet. Kunnskapsdepartementet (2015–2016).
Oslo, 2020.
3. Madsen OJ. Livsmestring på timeplanen. Rett medisin for elevene? Spartacus, Oslo, 2020.