Since the Canadian educational reform in the 1990's, schools have included health education in their curriculum, and as all children under the age of 16 must attend school, on can ask "what better place to encourage health?" With this increased focus on health education, more schools are adopting a Comprehensive School Health (CSH) approach, yet as the CSH approach is not standardized in Canadian schools, school's choosing to adopt such principles must do so independently. In addition to independent adoption, school's who do chose to employ a CSH approach are under researched, resulting in little information on current CSH practices. This lack of research is prevalent in many countries, as researchers have acknowledged that the concept of the CSH approach is more advanced than its implementation (WHO, 1997). Therefore, by examining the physical activity habits and body image perceptions of rural students, this research sought to develop a better understating of a rural CSH approach. Results of this study demonstrated that this school's vice-principal and physical education teachers engaged in a series of health promoting initiatives. This school's joint development of their CSH approach was one of the factors that lead to their extensive application of the approach, as they benefited from the additional support of volunteers, government funding, pedagogical resources, and health professionals. With these unique opportunities, this school surpassed the level of CSH implementation that is presented in the current literature, by successfully implementing a Health Curriculum, a Healthy Environment, and providing an avenue for Health Services to begin. The students in this rural school demonstrated high levels of physical activity participation and body image satisfaction. Students credited their knowledge of health issues to their unique health education opportunities, parental and peer modeling, and their participation in regular physical activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/27599 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Moore, Tracy |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 133 p. |
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