Science|Environment|Health, One Health, Planetary Health, Sustainability, and Education for Sustainable Development: How Do They Connect in Health Teaching?

Abstract

In this paper, we explore Science|Environment|Health, One Health, Planetary Health, and Sustainability/Education for Sustainable Development in the context of Agenda 2030 as four major frameworks that take a step toward investigating health from different angles to tackle the grand challenges that lie ahead of humanity. In most of these frameworks, the topic of health is no longer limited to the health of humans; it also encompasses the health of ecosystems and planetary systems. Therefore, our ways of teaching and discussing health in science education may need to be adjusted. To this aim, we first shortly characterize the four frameworks and then analyze the concepts of health, the contributing sciences, and the role of values in the frameworks. In our opinion, three main questions have to be settled: (1) Which concept of health lies at the root of each framework? (2) Which sciences should be considered when teaching about health and what role will they take in an interdisciplinary, integrative approach and under complexity restraints? (3) What is the role of values in these frameworks, and how can the is-ought fallacy be avoided? We finally discuss our findings in light of the concept of two-eyed seeing in science education. This concept helps us disentangle and sharpen the three main questions and draw implications for teaching about health in school science.