‘Paradoxical health education’: learning about health in Kenyan teacher training colleges

Informal, moralistic health education in Kenyan teacher education and how it influences the professional identity of student-teachers

“…Students learned to navigate between different health messages in a complex institution, and expanded their views on health beyond the biomedical HE curricula to include sociocultural topics, which they learned during everyday interactions with peers. These findings are in accordance with previous findings in similar contexts (Dahl, 2014) where health is understood as also being culturally defined and ingrained in social relations as social, cultural and bodily experiences of what is considered 'a good life' (Meinert, 2004), as well as being defined as being political and critical (Dahl, 2012a). In this way Kenyan teacher education can help to shape committed primary school teachers who can work to improve health standards in their future positions as HE professionals for the difficult task in primary schools.…”

“…The findings regarding how student-teachers develop a sense of belonging to the teaching profession through the resistance developed in their student community might be one way of recognising how informal, moralistic HE also contributes positively to the teaching profession. In addition, informal HE and students' everyday health experiences help to develop a broader image of health for student-teachers than formal HE lessons, as documented in previous research (Dahl, 2014). Students learned to navigate between different health messages in a complex institution, and expanded their views on health beyond the biomedical HE curricula to include sociocultural topics, which they learned during everyday interactions with peers.…”

“…Hence the bureaucratic structures produce different spaces for the production and legitimisation of the meaning of health (cf. Dahl, 2014): learning, life and professional formation depend on contextual disparities. If TTCs are regarded as bureaucracies, it becomes possible to explain why the everyday lives of students differed from the ideas propounded by the college.…”

Cross-cultural school-based encounters as global health education

“…Our data reflect the difference in the two settings, not only in terms of the differences in democratic rights in the two countries, but also the differences in the social position of young people and culture of schools. According to Dahl (2014), the pedagogical context in Kenyan schools is best described as authoritarian, teacher dominated and fact-oriented, while Danish school pedagogies are less authoritarian and aim to promote student agency through reflection and participation (Bruselius-Jensen et al, 2014). Because of these two different pedagogical approaches, it was expected that Kenyan and Danish students would not necessarily engage and participate in the interviews in the same way.…”

Narrative learning through life: Kenyan teachers’ life-stories and narrative learning, and what this means for their relation to the teaching profession

“…Research at Kenyan TTCs suggests that scientific classroom knowledge is regarded as superior to other forms of knowledge, for instance, to students' indigenous or everyday knowledge (Dahl, 2014b). This also applied to Grace's classroom lessons, which embodied many of the characteristics that other teachers referred to as ideal practice, with an intellectual approach that used instructional teaching aids, and where children participated physically in 'learning-by-doing'.…”