PROMOTING HEALTH IN SCHOOLS - THE GERMAN EXAMPLE

This paper gives an overview of research into health promotion in schools. Traditional approaches tend to focus on health education as a means of conveying knowledge about potential health threats or information about risks of certain forms of behaviour. The results and effects Of these approaches are moderate. The second part of the paper discusses more comprehensive approaches to health promotion in school settings. It not only addresses children's and adolescents' cognitive development, but also considers the entire personal, emotional, social and ecological experience of the child. The paper elaborates an four central dimensions of school health promotion: the curriculum, the social, the ecological and the community. All four dimensions are thought to be an integral part of a comprehensive strategy for health promotion that embeds factual information an health-risk behaviour into a context that is focused on everyday problem solving by the child or adolescent.