Purpose: Adapting the Health Promotion School (HPS) approach to context specifics is acknowledged as being essential for implementation and achieving optimal effectiveness. This study aims to explore implementation variations on seven HPS spectra (such as top-down to bottom-up involvement of stakeholders) on which implementation of the HPS…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore Finnish adolescents' subjective health literacy (HL) in association to school achievement, learning difficulties, educational aspirations, and family affluence. Design/methodology/approach: Nationally representative data were collected in Finland as a part of the international Health Behaviour in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to utilise the collective opinion of a group of Finnish experts to identify the most important learning outcomes of secondary-level school-based health education, in the specific domains of physical activity and nutrition. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: The study uses a Delphi survey technique to collect the…

Purpose: This paper aims to present the process evaluation for a two-year (2008-2010) participatory action research project focusing on home-school partnership in health learning, undertaken within the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) in Eastern Finland. Design/methodology/approach: Two intervention schools and two control schools (grade 5…

Purpose: This paper aims to present the baseline results of a research and development project targeted to improve the occupational well-being of school staff and maintain their ability to work, in Finland and Estonia. It reveals the most problematic factors in the various aspects of the school community and professional competence and outlines…

Purpose: This paper aims to clarify the extent to which youth sports clubs guide their coaches to recognise health promotion as a part of the coaching practice. The guidance activity of clubs is seen parallel to internal organisational communication. Design/methodology/approach: A survey of 93 (from 120, 78 per cent) youth sports clubs in Finland…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare the construction of health knowledge in the Finnish national curriculum and recent Finnish health education textbooks, at primary and secondary levels of education. The authors examine the visual and textual content of the textbooks in an attempt to identify their pedagogical style and approach to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the baseline results of a school development project where the aim was to improve school community staff's occupational wellbeing in co-operation with occupational health nurses. Design/methodology/approach: The Wellbeing at Your Work index form for school staff developed for the study aimed to…

This article describes how school nurses estimated their goal attainment in view of the contents and methods of health counselling and their roles and possibilities as health promoters in the school community. Data were collected from the school nurses (n=31) of the Finnish European Network of Health-Promoting schools, using a semi-structured…