Health promoting elementary schools in British Columbia : an analysis of school websites

• Main Author: Jacobs, Melissa Anna
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2011
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/39785

The purpose of this study was to explore the Comprehensive School Health approach and its influence on a school's culture of health. In this study, school websites were analyzed for healthy school words, sentences, and placement of content to determine how well three schools in British Columbia are making use of technology for the purpose of sharing attributes of Health Promoting Schools within their school communities. The schools chosen were categorized by the number of years they had been members of the Healthy Schools Network of British Columbia and were located in communities rated “low” and “lowest” vulnerable in the section of Physical Health and Well-Being of the Early Development Instrument. The study was divided into four phases: 1) A pilot study was executed which resulted in a tool for the quantitative analysis; 2) An in-depth qualitative and quantitative content analysis of provincial school websites was conducted classifying healthy school terms into the four pillars of the Comprehensive School Health framework; 3) A thematic analysis of the qualitative data was conducted formulating fifteen themes; and 4) A final analysis was performed which examined the locations or communication trends of healthy schools terms on the websites. Results from the analyses revealed that the health content terms were focused mostly in the Comprehensive School Health categories of Teaching and Learning (26%) and Social and Physical Environment (37%) while 50% of the healthy schools terms were found to be located in school newsletters. This study found that schools did not utilize their websites to support the teaching and learning of the British Columbia Ministry of Education Healthy Living and Physical Education curriculum. Also missing from school websites were Healthy Schools Policy documents and information on teacher wellness. A Comprehensive School Health conceptual framework of attributes of Health Promoting Schools was created from the results. === Education, Faculty of (Okanagan) === Graduate