Teacher educators and health education: from their concepts to their professional identity

Introduction: The objective of this study was to determine why some teacher educators use health education actions as part of their teacher training. Methods: We therefore studied the educators' discourse in order to identify factors affecting declared practices and adhesion to health education training. The study was conducted in two steps. Teacher educators were interviewed by telephone using a questionnaire and teacher training curricula were reviewed to assess current teacher training practices. A qualitative analysis was then conducted by structured telephone interviews of 16 teacher educators. Results and Discussion: The teacher educators interviewed in this study presented a holistic approach to health and health education, focusing on the individual, which had a positive impact on implementation of health education training. All of the teacher educators interviewed had also adopted health education as part of their professional identity: they felt competent in health education, and considered it to be part of their job. However, most teacher trainers reported concepts and declared practices according to an application-based model, focussing on acquired knowledge, or a didactic model, focussing on implementation of projects. The holistic model, focussing on individual health, remained very marginal and was not part of teacher educators' perceptions of their role in the training future teachers.