Simovska, as cited in Reid (2008), discusses the ‘Young Minds- exploring links between youth, culture and health’, a development project that allows students across Europe to collaborate on health issues. This program ] heavy youth involvement, dependent on youth across Europe, making decisions on what topics to explore, what needed to be researched, creating and working in teams, creating the website and selecting and planning actions for change. This program had some guidance from teachers who chose topics for the students and assisted with ICT needs. This program falls under the adult initiated, shared decisions with young people rung of Hart’s ladder, because whilst teachers assigned topics for the youth and provided guidance, youth were still responsible for developing and carrying out the project.

Cahill, Coffey, Lester, Medford, et al. (2014), conducted research on the ‘Get Ready’ program, which addressed issues such as alcohol, licit and illicit drug use. The study found teachers were less likely to deliver participatory activities that involved pupil-to-pupil learning strategies and were more likely to engage in teacher centric discussion. The study confirmed that most high school health teachers prefer the lower levels of Hart’s ladder- manipulation, decoration and tokenism.

Cheryl mentioned in her podcast another example of the participatory approach in action. Senior health students volunteer their time to go into junior health classes and run peer to peer mentoring. The senior students involved at the start of the year sign up to a curriculum topic and they organise and deliver health education in a way they seem relevant and effective for the younger years. This activity falls mid range on Hart’s ladder, where the activity is initiated by teachers, however young people are planning and implementing them.

During this class, we were asked to pair up and take a 25 minute stroll around campus, taking photos of things we associated with health. They show the rich cultural and societal diversity on campus. In a classroom setting, this activity also has the ability to be diverse, with different groups bringing back different data on what they view as health.

The key knowledge for this activity was chosen for us from Unit One, Outcome One and we were asked to pick two key skills for this activity, which are in the table below.

Key Knowledge	Key Skills
Various definitions of health and wellbeing, including physical, social, emotional, mental and spiritual health	collect and analyse data relating to variations in youth attitudes and priorities regarding health and wellbeing
Youth perspectives on the meaning and importance of health and wellbeing	explain a range of sociocultural factors that contribute to variations in the health

Activities students attempt and complete with the collected data include:

• Data comparison, review and discussion with the full class
• Create a survey and survey students in their year level or school to address the following question “How health friendly is our school?”
• Use the data collected to explore the sociocultural factors in their school to create strategies in small groups to make their school more health friendly- e.g. changing food in the canteen, more plants, vegie garden, art installations, more places to sit amongst nature, to increase different aspects of health in the school and build school morale
• Present these ideas to the class, vote for their favorites and send representatives to an SRC meeting to make them happen

References

Cahill, H., Coffey, J., Lester, L., Medford, R., et al. (2014). Influences on Teachers’ Use of Participatory Learning Strategies in Health Education Classes. Health Education Journal, 73(6), 702-713.

Reid, A., & SpringerLink. (2008). Participation and learning : Perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability. Heidelberg]: Springer.