The problem under consideration was an assessment of the effect of teaching physical education, through a health concepts approach, to first-semester male and female college freshmen in a metropolitan junior college. In order to further clarify the problem, the primary purposes were to determine the change in health knowledges, health habits, physical fitness, and attitude toward physical education. from the beginning to the ending of the course. A further purpose was to determine the relationships between the scores on the four instruments used in this study.

The purposes of this study were to measure the knowledge and understanding of certain health concepts that are held by international students who attend a large multi-purpose university. The international students took Educational Testing Service's Cooperative Health Education Test (CHET), which was designed for junior high school students, and their mean responses were compared with the CHET ninthgrade national mean scores of American students on selected variables. In addition to demographic variables, the test variables used were consumer health, community health, international health, disease and disorders, personal health care, sex education, growth and development, nutrition, mental health, drug use and abuse, and safety and first aid. The ultimate purpose of the study was to discover the health area conceptions of international students for the use of teachers, curriculum planners, and program evaluators.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T15:08:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Arquivototal.pdf: 1347917 bytes, checksum: f3c71c30f3e7d23c685c89cfc77301e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-08-31 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present work is a qualitative research, based on documental analysis. Its central purpose was to analyze the formal curriculum of the graduation medical course of the Federal University of Paraiba state, Brazil, reaching toward the comprehension about the Health and Education concepts which are present in there, as backgrounds of the relationship between theory and practice. The investigation starts from the background assumption that sanitary and educative practices are supported by Health and Education concepts, not in an idealistic way, from the theoretical idea to the sublunar concrete world of the practices, but otherwise considering the interconnection between theory and practice, in a process which has a major importance to health professionals education. To achieve that goal, it has been chosen the hermeneutic dialectic methodological approach, and at the same time, efforts were made in order to organize the work in three distinct moments, following the dialectical steps: initial synthesis, at the first step; second, analytical step; and, finally, the new synthesis. This methodology required the theoretical development of the concepts of Education and Health, through a historical perspective, which considered the articulation of these concepts with the relations between theory and practice. Such analysis of the formal curriculum yields evidences that this curriculum has a broad and fragmented background, in which idealist and dialectic concepts of Education, and mechanistic and social-determinist concepts of Health, are gathered side by side. Despite the social-determinist concept of Health is advanced in comparison with the mechanistic one, it maintains a determinist bias. Regarding the relationship between theory and practice, it is possible to observe that the partially advanced curriculum backgrounds are neither translated into the effective choice of active pedagogical methodologies (related to Education dialectic concepts), nor into practices which would suggest those Health dialectic concepts announced in the curriculum introduction´s statements. The Health and Education dialectic concepts are clearly exposed only in few parts of the curriculum, as the Horizontal Modules A (HMAs) in which the Education and Health concepts establish an opening to shared planning of care, and shared knowledge construction. Even in these modules (HMAs), the challenge remains of ensuring its effective dialectic nature, as the students move forward from the health to the disease, from the social to the clinical, from the community to the individual. In spite of these challenges, the formal curriculum reinforces its inconclusiveness as it claims for further evaluation and constant improvements. Therefore, new investigations and interventions are needed to go forward in the efforts of improving health professionals´ formation, regarding the transformation of society, which only can happen with shared care planning and emancipatory education. / Trata-se de pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa, de natureza analítica documental. Seu objetivo central foi analisar o Projeto Político Pedagógico do curso de Medicina da Universidade Federal da Paraíba em busca de apreender os conceitos de Saúde e Educação, como fundamentos da relação teoria-prática. Parte-se do princípio de que as práticas sanitárias e educativas são informadas por conceitos de Saúde e Educação, não de uma forma idealista, de um ideal teórico para o mundo sublunar das práticas, mas dentro de um entendimento de interligação entre a teoria e a prática, e que estes são determinantes na formação dos profissionais de saúde. Para atingir o objetivo deste trabalho, foi escolhida a abordagem metodológica hermenêutica dialética, bem como se procurou dividir o trabalho nos três momentos do método dialético: fase sintética inicial, fase analítica e terceira fase, com nova síntese. Esta metodologia envolveu a construção teórica das categorias Educação e Saúde, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica, que considerou as articulações destes conceitos com as relações teoria-prática. A análise do PPP a partir da abordagem escolhida demonstrou que este apresenta um caráter abrangente e fragmentado, havendo em seus fundamentos a presença de conceitos ora idealistas ora dialéticos de Educação e ora mecanicistas ora dialéticos de Saúde, que são bastante abrangentes e ousados, porém predomina nestes fundamentos um certo determinismo no que se refere aos conceitos de Saúde e uma falta de definição clara quanto às opções pedagógicas. No que se refere à relação teoria-prática, percebe-se que a ousadia dos fundamentos curriculares não se concretizam na efetiva adoção de metodologias pedagógicas ativas (relacionadas a conceitos dialéticos de Educação), nem tampouco se materializa na prática curricular sugerida pela estruturação dos módulos curriculares no PPP a operacionalização de conceitos dialéticos de Saúde sugeridos nos fundamentos. O que se observa é a adoção maciça de conceitos de Saúde ora mecanicistas e ora social-deterministas. Os conceitos dialéticos de Saúde são claramente explicitados apenas em alguns momentos do PPP, como em alguns Módulos Horizontais A, nos quais se utilizam conceitos de Educação e Saúde que estabelecem uma abertura dos futuros profissionais para a construção compartilhada do conhecimento e do cuidado. Mesmo nestes Módulos (MHAs) permanece o desafio de garantir seu efetivo caráter dialético à medida que se avança da saúde para a doença, do social para o clínico, da comunidade para o indivíduo. Apesar destes desafios, o PPP é um documento que reforça seu próprio caráter processual, estando aberto para reavaliações e aprimoramentos constantes. Sendo assim, novas investigações e intervenções fazem-se necessárias para que se avance na luta por uma formação de profissionais de Saúde capazes de operar na perspectiva da transformação da sociedade, jamais abdicando da construção compartilhada do cuidado e da emancipação.