Learning, Education and Health

Hanna Nilsson

University West, Sweden

What value and significance does school and education have in our society today? What can be done within this area to keep up with the changes that the world now goes through? How do we learn? Are there different ways of learning, or is there only one? In what extension does education affect our lives and how we feel, and how can schools and the school system be formed in order to gain quality of the education (in relation to matching the globalized world) and at the same time help students to feel good in school?

These are some complex questions that I have been thinking about, and as I study health sciences, or maybe I shall call it social sciences in English, I am taking on a health perspective – on all levels and in all its senses.

I strongly believe in the correlation between education and health, that school and learning together is one great component that without a doubt influences our health. This I will try to show and explain here in some different ways. Education has a very important role in every society and should be given more attention and reflection, because just as everything else constantly changes around us, education needs development as well.

Before starting to talk about health I want to clarify my basic point of view according to this concept. I see health as something based on a number of things that lie partly on individual basis – such as genetic factors, our way of living and life style, and also mental aspects like how we think and view our world – and partly on the social relations we have or don’t have with other people, and also on environmental, cultural and socio-economic conditions (Naidoo & Wills 2009).

I prefer focusing on what makes people stay well or even improve their health, what we can do to actualize this, and how for example society and organizations can be formed in order to accomplish good health among those who are part of it. In other words I’m not really interested in finding out about diseases or what is “wrong” with a person, or preventing accidents or diseases to occur. I don’t like the way of thinking as you are either healthy or ill – everybody has health in some extent. Health is to be seen as a continuum, where people can find themselves all the time – moving in the direction towards health or towards poor health (Antonovsky 1987; 1991; 2007). Health can be seen as a process – a life-long learning process – where different aspects like genes, age, sex, life-style and social relations, together with circumstantial factors like the place where we live, work and go to school, and the environmental, economic and cultural conditions that surround us, have a great impact on us[1]. Every one of us carries a bag of resources with us to cope with what we face in our daily life; when we face a problem or challenge we can use our experience and personal or circumstantial resources to solve it. Whether we make it or not this experience it becomes a means for our health in another occasion. At the same time, we can view health as being a resource in itself that help us live our lives easier and to do what we want to do.

According to several authors education is an important component for people’s health. One big part of the environmental and socio-economic determinants of health is the living and working conditions, and among these is education which is considered to have a significant influence on health. I want to advocate education as an important part of having good health, and to begin with this can be explained by its association with good income. There is a strong association between having low income and bad health – according to Naidoo & Wills (2005) you then have a reduced access to material resources and quality in housing and working environment for example, you tend to pick up unhealthy behaviors like smoking and you can’t choose from all healthy food but choose the unhealthy instead because they are cheaper and more accessible, and also psychosocial factors leading to less healthy conditions are more apparent – such as lack of social networks and a state of mind that points to low self-esteem and self-confidence. All this contributes to a bad effect on health. It is actually scientifically shown that poverty leads to poor health and increased mortality. Therefore I’m thinking that it is really important to consider educational resources in developing countries, where education can be a kind of funds for gaining health. By giving people the chance to educate themselves and take part in the society they can develop a better self-esteem and self-efficacy (Bandura 1997). At least this is what I believe. And it is shown that the level of education has a direct significance to our health – the higher level of graduation a person has, the better is the health. This is quite a mystery, or at least it was unknown before Michael Marmot (2006) wrote about this correlation and the social gradient, which can also be seen in income, type of work and which social group one’s parents come from. It is something that is complex and hard to find an explanation to.

Another thing that affects health and well-being in the working or school environment is whether or not there is a balance between effort and reward (Marmot 2006). When you do something for someone else or the society, or to perform well in school, you need to get something back for yourself. In work it is often to be paid or get some extra appreciation from the boss, and in school it can be attention and encouragement from a teacher. If we don’t get rewards for what we are doing it can result in psychological issues and stress, which has a negative effect on health.

I believe it is important that schools are organized so that pupils get support and encouragement, that every child and student are rewarded in some way for their efforts, since there are many students who struggle in school all the time and not feeling enough confirmation that they are good enough as a student and as a person. Encouraging the students initiates the will to do their best and to keep on struggling and continue doing well. This motivation is also very important for development. I think this is positive for your health; if you as a teacher manage to make a child feel like he is seen and encourage him for his efforts, you wake up the inner motivation to learn more, which I think promotes health (for example self-confidence), which in its turn increases the chances that the child will develop to his or her full potential in school. Furthermore I think all of this also can lead to a quality enhancement of the school. Let me explain. Since the school environment influences so strongly on how a student is feeling in school, and overall, it is essential to have a safe, positive and inspiring atmosphere – which we still have a long way to go before we reach. But talking about quality in schools I refer also to that the school environment should be experienced as more affirmative and confident, a place where you want to be. If a school is well formed regarding support and encouragement in the tutoring I think also generates a supportive environment between the pupils, where it is less likely to be bullied or feel outside.

Then how do we actually learn? How can we affect learning processes in order to get the most out of it?

There are many different ways to form education, and different ways to learn depending on what kind of knowledge we focus and value. Today there are also higher demands on the individual’s knowledge in daily life and especially in the working life. Companies have higher demands on flexibility and you have more responsibility of everything that has to do with your work. This often makes it difficult to draw a line between work and private life and the individual prerequisites are central. These demands can lead to stress, insecurity and maybe you overwork because you feel like you have to (Allvin 2006). – I think it is important to find a way to prepare students for this when they are studying, because it is not going to change in another direction any time soon and we need to be able to cope with these circumstances if we are going to maintain health in this rapidly developing society and improve health on the work places.

So, considering different types of learning; traditionally schools all over the world have had a way of thinking of education as such: Learning means for a person to improve competence or learn about how to manage certain things that are given. In other words it’s transference of knowledge that is already known, for example learning some terms within medicine. This can be called reproductive learning (Ellström & Hultman 2004).

Today more people have started to have a more critical perspective and this is what the development-focusing learning is about (my translation; Ellström & Hultman 2004). Here you question, explore new thoughts and have a critic mind and attitude towards your own competence, and develop your own conceptions. I think this is how we need to start thinking more – as I mentioned in the beginning education needs some kind of development, and then we have to do our best to adapt to how the world changes today.

Because of the demands that the world around us puts on us I think it is important to connect education, at least on a higher level, to working life and the “real” world. In that way students work integrated with what they would face in the working life, instead of being stuck in the academic world not knowing what will meet them when they are ready to start working. One way of putting this into practice is how for example my university forms many of the courses. The foundation of this is called Work Integrated Learning, and means that the learning is based on experience on workplaces. Within this concept the student get knowledge and experience from two different worlds, theory and practice, and then put these together to understand and learn with help from both sides – one thing helps to understand the other. It is a cooperation between the university and the working life.

I think it is positive that people try to develop education in order to fit reality. I am talking about this especially on a higher level of education. I have a lot of practical elements in my education and I am very glad for this. To constantly have a reconnection to the working life in which we are going to see ourselves in a few years, is valuable for getting the right tools, an own point of view and a genuine understanding for the work and what kind of challenges we could face.

Finally:

I see it as education and health are very close together and reciprocally affecting each other. To have good health is essential for what we achieve in school, and different aspects of health as self-confidence, self-efficacy, social support, balance between demands and reward, and to be able to do what you want to do, affects learning and school results. School is also an important actor when it comes to personal development, which also generates health. It is like a circle.

As humans we learn all the time and through all of our lives, and this process is central for health, since health in itself is a life-long process and affected by everything we do, what we experience and everything that surrounds us in the daily life. In other words health can be means for school and school can be means for health.

References

Allvin, Michael (2006). Gränslöst arbete : socialpsykologiska perspektiv på det nya arbetslivet. Malmö: Liber.

Antonovsky, Aaron (2005). Hälsans mysterium (Unraveling the mystery of health). Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2005.

Bandura A (1997). Self-efficacy and the exercise of control. WH Freeman, New York NY.

Ellström, Per-Erik & Hultman, Glenn (red.) (2004). Lärande och förändring i organisationer: om pedagogik i arbetslivet. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Granberg, Otto (2009). Lära eller läras: Om kompetens och utbildningsplanering i arbetslivet. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2009.

Marmot, Michael (2006). Statussyndromet: hur vår sociala position påverkar hälsan och livslängden (The status syndrom). Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 2006.

Naidoo, Jennie & Wills, Jane (2009). Foundations for Health promotion. Edinburgh, New York, Elsevier.

World Health Organization. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986).

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