Abstract
All over the world the health of children and youth is considered to be the most important value. Therefore, one task of teachers’ education is to train pre-service primary school and kindergarten teachers in a way that enables them to maintain and strengthen their own and their students’ health. The aim of this article is to present the comparative results of a study of pre-service teachers’ majoring in “Primary Education” and “Preschool Education” readiness to perform health promotion activities, to disclose ways of higher education optimisation to find new content, methods and forms of improving the quality of pre-service school and preschool teachers’ training to conduct health promotion work. Our study employed a mixed research method. We developed a questionnaire that consisted of closed-ended and open-ended questions, combined into several sets. We also carried out an anonymous survey of second and third-year students of the Department of Pedagogy of Primary Education (n=133) and the Department of Preschool Education (n=145) of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. The survey was conducted in March-April of 2019. The conducted research shows that the training of pre-service primary school and preschool teachers at higher educational establishments for health maintenance is effective, but needs some improvement. Regarding the motivational indicator of students’ readiness for health-promoting work, almost 65% of the respondents believe, that preserving the health of children and youth is the task of educational institutions. As for the cognitive component, more than one-half of our students demonstrate a sufficient level of the relevant knowledge, but their number depends on the problem and the academic discipline. There is also a slight difference in students’ answers concerning effective forms and methods of health promotion activity. The results of the study indicate that improvement is possible under the following conditions: purposeful and systematic implementation of pre-service teachers' health education, thorough refining of the course contents, the purpose and tasks of which are related to the development of healthcare competencies; an increase in academic hours for practical training; creation of high-quality textbooks and teaching aids; expanding the curricula of higher educational institutions through optional subjects aimed at the development of students’ competencies for their own and their students’ health maintenance, as well as habits of exercising in their free time.
Highlights
Social significance of health culture raises the issue of teacher training to develop health-preserving competence in youth applying appropriate and efficient educational strategies and technologies
The issue of primary school teachers’ readiness to perform healthcare activities is defined by Slyvka (2014) as holistic personal development, which includes the substantiated motivation of the profession choice, the formation of professionally significant qualities, personal and professional focus on the values of health maintenance, the skills and abilities required for the organisation and implementation of educational events, aimed at preserving and promoting the health of schoolchildren
Instruments and Procedure The data collection included the use of a questionnaire that consisted of 27 closed-ended and openended questions, combined into 5 sets: “Students’ motivation for health-promoting work in professional activity”, “The level of knowledge of health promotion activities at primary school”, “Do you have enough knowledge to make up a short presentation for schoolchildren on health maintaining educational process organisation?”, “Forms and methods of health-promoting activities, which are the most effective for health maintenance of school students”, “What are the negative factors, slowing down the effectiveness of future primary school teachers’ professional training for health-promoting activities”
Summary
Social significance of health culture raises the issue of teacher training to develop health-preserving competence in youth applying appropriate and efficient educational strategies and technologies. The issue of primary school teachers’ readiness to perform healthcare activities is defined by Slyvka (2014) as holistic personal development, which includes the substantiated motivation of the profession choice, the formation of professionally significant qualities, personal and professional focus on the values of health maintenance, the skills and abilities required for the organisation and implementation of educational events, aimed at preserving and promoting the health of schoolchildren. The purposes of the present research are to identify and compare the motivational, cognitive and instructions components of pre-service teachers’ readiness to conduct health promotion activities and to discover ways of future specialists’ training optimisation to enable them to perform health maintaining activities at schools and preschools effectively
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