Developing Staff Skills for Healthy Literacy
Submission Date: December 2010
State/Territory Submitted on the Behalf of: Wisconsin
States/Territories Involved: Wisconsin
Public Health Issue:The health education curriculum in most schools of higher education is focused on didactic content rather than on helping future health teachers develop specific teaching skills. Both national and Wisconsin health education standards include content knowledge as only one standard out of eight. The remaining seven standards require that teachers develop the skills necessary to help students be self-directed, responsible citizens who have learned to solve problems related to their health. Developing problem-solving and other skills helps students take charge of their health and apply knowledge to the practice of good health habits. Because this skill development is unavailable in most Wisconsin schools of higher education, health teachers training in the state lack some of the skills necessary to maximize student learning and benefit.
Program Action:The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction developed a one credit graduate course to teach building of skill-based units of instruction in three content areas – nutrition, tobacco, and human sexuality. The course is based on two related efforts 1) the Wisconsin Building Skills for Health Literacy: Tobacco, Human Sexuality and Nutrition set of documents which were developed over two years and 2) a staff development training series on these topics which continues in six locations for the 2010-11 school year.
Good nutrition is a behavior students are encouraged to adopt; tobacco use is an undesirable behavior to be prevented; and human sexuality is a sensitive area of behavior to be addressed at an appropriate time in a student’s life. The course guides learners to make their teaching more effective by developing their student’s skills in decision making (related to human sexuality), in understanding the influences in the world around them (related to tobacco use) and in accessing accurate information (related to nutrition).
For example, students often rely on the internet as a source of health information but may not have the skill to sort the good information from the unreliable or incomplete. The skill-based Nutrition Web Evaluation checklist – adapted from the criteria in the CRAAP Test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose – is a skill-building strategy that course participants learn how to use in their classroom. Students evaluate Web sites with the checklist to arrive at a score that helps them judge the site’s reliability for guiding their nutrition choices. Course instructors supply participants with a template for developing additional skill-building activities to suit their students and expand the learning opportunities.
The three course components are:
- Online modules in the three topic areas that review health education standards, formative and summative assessment, and scoring student assessments.
- A day long face to face training focused on teaching the skill utilizing national standards, practicing the skill to build competency and assessing participant’s attainment of the skill.
- 3) A requirement that participants develop a skill-based unit of instruction utilizing the teach, practice, and assess model
Over 100 teachers in areas such as developmental counseling, elementary education, family and consumer science, health education and physical education received instruction through this course in the year and a half since its development. Department of Public Instruction staff created an additional course entirely focused on nutrition, based on survey information indicating that Wisconsin teachers wanted units of instruction including nutrition related skills such as ‘accessing accurate information,’ not just facts.
Results of a three month follow-up evaluation found that teachers who took the one credit class started to apply the skill based instruction strategy in more than one health content area. For example, a health teacher from Sturgeon Bay applied the skills learned in the course to a unit on effective communication for dealing with real life health issues. A school social worker from Platteville developed a unit on tobacco advocacy for high school students. The Department of Education is collecting model units of instruction developed as a result of the course and posting them online for wider availability of resources.
The course helps teachers meet national health education standards which are primarily skill- based. Offering teacher development as a graduate level course increases the rigor of the experience and provides an opportunity to get teachers to develop a new method of health instruction. Teachers are also granted a graduate credit by Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin which helps them meet professional development goals and the professional development requirements of licensure.
Another important aspect of this course is the online availability of the three model units on nutrition, tobacco and human sexuality to all Wisconsin teachers on their individual schedules. Plans are to conduct three classes each semester.
Program Areas:Healthy Communities (general), Social Determinants of Health, Tobacco, Other
State Contact Information:
WI
Brian Weaver
Director, Coordinated School Health Program
608-266-7921
brian.weaver@dpi.wi.gov