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Teachers as health workers: Patterns and imperatives of Australian teachers’ work
Author(s) -
Rossi Tony,
Pavey Amanda,
Macdonald Doune,
McCuaig Louise
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1002/berj.3197
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , doxa , work (physics) , psychology , sociology , public relations , public health , likert scale , pedagogy , medical education , social psychology , nursing , political science , medicine , mechanical engineering , philosophy , developmental psychology , epistemology , engineering
With increasing cross‐sectoral relationships and partnerships and the blurring of the boundaries of the various service sectors, the membrane that is assumed to separate education and health in terms of young people's wellbeing looks thinner than ever. In this project we are concerned to know what teachers do in terms of young people's health, how much time they spend doing it and to what extent this work might be considered as health work ? The paper is informed by a Likert style survey and semi‐structured interview data collected from a large cohort of teachers employed in different school sectors across Queensland, Australia and is framed by ideas concerning field, practice and doxa . The data suggest that teachers, often with a minimum of training, undertake work that might be categorised as health work and do so with a high degree of commitment and with a growing sense of urgency but with concerns related to their competence. We consider it important to understand the reasons why and the extent to which teachers engage in work that might be more readily associated with public health and to ask “are teachers health workers?”