How has the Inquiry Project experience advanced your understandings of

what good health education might be and why?

WHAT I LEARNT ABOUT GENDER AND WORKPLACE HEALTH

When deciding that I would like to do my group inquiry project on the topic
of Workplace health, I originally thought that I had a reasonable idea of what
this would look like. Firstly, I imagined that it would all be focussed on the idea
that men get injured more often than women in the workplace. Which I
assumed was due to of the types of jobs that are stereotypical to males and
those that are stereotypical to females. As jobs that are stereotypical to
males tend to involve much more dangerous working environments, such as
farming, mining, and construction work. But after discussing with my other
group members about what we all personally perceived gender and
workplace health, I learned that my first thoughts were quite biased and that
there was another completely different way to look at this topic. This was
where we began researching more about the idea that men and womens
health are actually both at risk in the workplace, but in different ways, these
being physically and mentally.

Despite this, I personally dont believe that we discussed this issue the way we
would have liked to, to efficiently educate the class about this topic. As a
group we focussed too much on the two media articles (Branco, 2015; Powell,
2017) that we found, rather than finding multiple sources of information to
support what we were discussing. What we tried to discuss was that yes, men
are getting physically injured more often in the workplace due to the
environment that they are working in putting them at a physical risk (Lovell,
2014). An example of this being a construction site where risks include
working at height, moving heavy objects, and exposure to asbestos (Lovell,
2014). In comparison to this, womens health is also being affected in the
workplace, although their mental health is being affected more than their
physical health (Stokes, 2017). An example of this is nurses working in hospitals
where patients are physically and verbally abusing them, affecting their
overall mental health and stability (Stokes, 2017).

Despite the fact that we were able to find two media articles one focussing
on womens mental health in the workplace and one on mens physical
health in the workplace, there are still plenty more articles on mens health
available than womens health. This assisted me to learn and understand that
different workplace exposures are being significantly overlooked by society,
and physical health is being perceived as more important than mental
health. My opinion is that as a society we have not yet properly recognised
that different types of workplace exposures can have different types of
health implications, such as physical and mental health issues.

WHAT I LEARNT BY DOING A GROUP PROJECT

One really key thing that I learnt from participating in a group project is that
working in a group is a really effective way to learn. I believe that working in
a group allows you to get multiple different ideas, perspectives and opinions,
which is necessary to produce work that isnt bias and unreliable. This was
especially important in our situation as the information we collected and
used in our presentation was being used to educate the class and further
extend their knowledge on the topic of gender and workplace health. If we
were to provide our fellow classmates with bias and unreliable information,
this has the ability to produce a so called domino affect, where they could
then go and share this false information with others, and so forth. By working
in a group we were able to share ideas with one another, discuss these, then
break them apart identifying advantages and disadvantages, and then
refine our ideas and extend our overall knowledge on the topic. From being
in the health education class I have noticed that it works especially well if you
have just given your class a question or idea to think about, if they discuss it
with their peers they are able to learn so much more than just what they
initially perceived.

My opinion is that working as a group also prepares you for the future. It
teaches you how to be apart of a team and effectively work with others to
achieve a common goal. It does this by making you delegate roles equally
so that each member is sharing the workload, to ensure that your goal is
achieved by the deadline. In this instance, producing an educative
presentation to present to fellow classmates on our topic. You also learn how
to discuss ideas, perspectives and opinions, as mentioned earlier, effectively
and respectively to avoid confrontation with others. A few more advantages
of group work are that you are able to develop your communication skills,
attempt to understand more complex issues, that you may normally avoid to
stay in your comfort zone, and you are not only accountable for yourself in
this situation, you are also accountable for the rest of your group, improving
your work ethic and effort to achieve.

Another really important benefit of working in a group is that you are actually
able to learn how to learn better. This works by viewing how your peers learn,
such as what techniques they use or approaches they use to resolve issues,
and you are then able to take on board these ideas and develop the way
that you learn using these new ideas. I believe that this is a really important
thing to do especially as we continue to get older, as we tend to stick to the
one way that we know how to learn, when it is possible that we could learn a
much more beneficial and successful way to do so, benefiting us immensely.

Consequently, I believe that when educating a class, whether that be

educating health or not, getting the class to work in groups is a really
effective way to do so.

WHAT GOOD HEALTH EDUCATION IS AND WHY?

Like any form of education, I believe that good health education consists of
providing knowledge and information to students through a variety of
different techniques, whilst also leaving aspects of information open to
questioning and interpretation. Good health education needs to be
interactive and involve the students to make it interesting and engaging. If a
lesson is not interactive or engaging students tend to not pay as much
attention, or comprehend or remember the information. My group personally
did not make our lesson as interactive as we should have, as we only
incorporated one quiz at the end of our lesson. Instead I believe that we
should have given the class members questions to discuss in their groups, to
get them to think about the topic more thoroughly, and extend their
knowledge on the topic. The use of discussion and asking questions is really
effective when educating to ensure that the class actually understands the
information that you are providing them with. The one thing I believe our
group did well was using a quiz at the end of our lesson as a revision tool to
summarise some of the key point made, to help the students remember what
we spoke about.

As mentioned earlier you must provide non-bias information when educating

health. This is done by presenting all possible opinions on a topic, the
advantages and disadvantages of ideas, and both sides of a possible
argument. I believe that a really good way to educate health is by relating to
the students personal lives. If information is related directly to them or
someone they know it is much easier for them to understand and remember
what they have learnt. Planning, preparation and organisation is something I
wish my group and I did a lot better. We should have managed and
prioritised our time better so that we werent making so many changes on
the day that we had to present to the class. I believe that this is another very
important aspect of educating, this will consequently affect how well you
educate your students.

Another really important thing to consider when educating health is the

wellbeing of your students, as some topics that are discussed in health can
be extremely personally and some quite emotional. One way to ensure the
wellbeing of your students is to provide possible helplines or further sources of
information to them at the conclusion of the lesson, that they can use to help
themselves or maybe someone they know that needs assistance with their
health.

Despite all of this, I believe that the key characteristic of good health
education, is teaching students how they can, and encouraging them to
improve their overall health. The importance of this is so that the students can
then go on to educate others about they can improve their health, in a hope
that eventually a greater percentage of the population of Australia, and
then possibly the world, will be efficiently educated in the topic of health.
Consequently, creating a healthier world.
Reference List
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Australian Government (2017). Work Health and Safety (OHS) acts, regulations and
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Milner, A. & Kavanaga, A. & Hewitt, B. (2016, December 15). Women are four times
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Powell, G. (2017, January 5). Teen worker dies in hospital after fall at Perth CBD
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Stokes, K., (2017, February). Abuse of doctors and nurses as record high in SA
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