Assessing children’s health literacy: A curricular approach

Abstract

Objectives: Increasing childhood health literacy (HL) is a crucial means of improving health outcomes and reducing preventable deaths globally. Understanding how to best support children’s HL development in schools is essential. However, identifying pedagogical strategies that develop children’s HL relies on a fit-for-purpose measure. Currently, no universally accepted approach for measuring HL among children exists. The purpose of this paper was to propose and discuss how a curricular approach to assessing children’s HL could provide a means to overcoming the challenges with existing children HL measures. Design/Methods: The discussion is framed by the key components of assessment – outcome of interest, and collection, analysis and interpretation of data – and is underpinned by contemporary HL and educational research. Setting: The Australian Curriculum is used to discuss the approach in practice. Results: A curricular approach to HL assessment suggests that HL assessment may work best when it is relevant to the child and their context, is integrated with other areas of the curriculum, allows children to demonstrate a wide range of HL skills and contains an element of open-endedness. Measurement could be guided by a rubric (underpinned by a taxonomy), and interpretation of scores consistently aligned with the learning intentions outlined in the curriculum. Conclusion: A curricular approach provides a contextually adaptive framework from which HL assessment tools for children can be developed.