Professor, Dr.Hab. A.P. Matveyev
Associate Professor, Dr. Hab. A.S. Makhov
Professor, Dr.Hab. V.Y. Karpov
Associate Professor, PhD A.V. Kornev
¹Russian State Social University, Moscow

Keywords: health protection technologies, target health standard of pupils, project method, health improvement support.

Background. The notion of “health protection technologies” has been commonly and increasingly in use since the early 1990ies when the students’ health improvement and protection goals were put high in the list of priorities by the national education system. However, despite the relatively long history of the term being applied, it has never been supported by reasonably sound theoretical grounds with the content analysis and objective theoretical analysis. One of the proofs for the above is the fact that the sector practitioners of direct concern to the young people’s health protection problems still hold to largely different in opinions and understandings of the meaning of the health protection process, its genuine features, factors and structural basics [2, 3, 11]. And it is quite natural that this vagueness of the conceptual framework and views results in the health protection process being indefinite in its subjective characteristics and, consequently, the process guides and objectives for the health improvement actions are still unclear in fact [3, 5, 9]. Therefore, there are good reasons to believe that the present research activities to find the best health improvement and protection methods and tools can unlikely be efficient enough and, hence, the major objective of the students’ health improvement may not be attainable in the present situation. Having said that, we should also emphasize the fact that the present uncertainty in vision of the health protection process missions and targets results in new, poorly justified notional substitutes being often used by the process actors, and these substitutes further complicate the progress in the students’ health protection and improvement process. It may be pertinent to mention here for example such terms as “health formation”, “health protection”, “health stimulation”, “health strengthening” etc. that are rather subjective in their meanings and applications.

The relatively vague present understanding of the meaning of the health protection process is associated with quite contradictory views on the meanings and definitions of the term “technology” that has been actively used in national education science since the late 1960ies and even was applied by the developers of the modern state standards of school education (1997). “Technology” as a term originating from the industrial production process where it refers to the most labour- and cost-efficient ways of manufacturing industrial products and goods have expanded the frame of its notional content so broadly that is was accepted by the national education sector as one of the conceptual constructs of the modern theory of the Russian education development process [4, 6-8]. It refers to many things starting from the technical tools being combined in an institutional structure of an educational process and presently may mean the educator’s activity design process geared to attain certain specific objectives [9]. In this meaning of the term, the educational activity content, succession and consistence of the educational actions are focused on the specific result that is presented as a prognostic model (sample) in the educator’s activity design. 

Objective of the study was to substantiate the need for a theoretical basis for the notion of “health protection technologies”, identify its structural basics and objective results in the school education process design.

Study results and discussion. Analysis of the special literature on the subject shows that the specialists’ attempts to sort out the meanings of the “health protection technologies” presently go along the following two vectors of theoretical studies. The first vector is largely driven by the hygiene-prioritizing studies that are mostly designed to optimize the students’ education activity, prevent fatigue and overstress in daily school routines [1, 3]. The second vector refers to the studies designed to improve the students’ motor activity and increase the efficiency of the physical education and health improvement practices under the regular school curriculum [2, 10, 11]. It should be noted that these vectors are driven by different objectives and cannot be combined based on the concrete results they pursue and the specific health criteria they apply. Therefore, both of the concepts can unlikely be used as the base components for design of integrated health protection technologies. The above considerations demonstrate that the initial  notional base needs to be clarified to develop due design concepts for the “health protection technologies” being consistently structured, including the notion of “technology” in application to the students’ health protection agenda in the school educational process.

As things now stand in the national education sector, there are two tendencies in interpretation of the term “educational technology” and, consequently, two approaches to the meaning and definition of the notion. The first approach is focused on the increasingly expanded opportunities offered by the modern technical tools of educational process that make it possible to actively shape up the self-reliance and creative activity of the students [4]. This line may be viewed as essentially correlating with the notion of “educational technology” as it develops the theoretical and practical basis of the national educational process. The second approach is based on the idea of the educational process being reasonably designed and, as such, reasonably reflects the content of the term “educational technology” [8, 9]. This approach is designed to attain a certain strictly preset result and allows the educational process content to be formatted to generate any desirable result. The desirable health model is described either by specific requirements like the ones set forth by the Federal State Educational Standard (FSES) or by some written specifications of the educational technologies.

The above-mentioned controversy in understanding of the meaning of “technology” as a notion raise the reasonable question in the health protection community on what of the following two ways is the most appropriate to design and build up the “health protection technologies”:

– Way number one implies the “health protection” technologies being applied based on a health improvement methodology development theory that should give due priority to the subject of health improvement physical culture with an emphasis on a variety of physical practices, training simulators and the relevant medical and hygienic initiatives being designed and applied for the process success; and

– Way number two refers to the “health protection technologies” driven by the health improvement process design theory that is focused on the health condition being directly modified by target means to attain the desirable health result as verified by the relevant set of health criteria.

Having compared both of the approaches, we have to confess that the efforts to comprehend and theoretically substantiate the basics of the “health protection technologies” are the most preferable at this juncture for the benefit of the school education system as far as the problems of the students’ health protection and improvement are concerned. Moreover, the initiatives to implement this approach in virtually every school of the Russian Federation may be supported by the available valuable practical experience of the “project method” educational technologies that are broadly applied at present.

Based on the situation analyses and the conceptual provisions developed by the national education science, we propose that the “health protection technologies” shall mean the well-thought and clearly designed detailed health model geared to attain the desirable result of the health improvement process, the result being verified by the concrete health transformations as verified by the relevant health criteria. This definition makes an emphasis on the desirable health-improvement result being spelled out in detail, with every its specific feature and factor being duly preset to facilitate the choice of objectives and goals; sets of the most appropriate methods and tools; and sequences of the educational actions most efficient for success of the health improvement process. It should be noted that the “desirable health model” will be designed with due regard to three human health components offered by the World Health Organization (WHO), namely physical health, mental health and social well-being. The proposed definition may be viewed as potentially acceptable as demonstrated by the practical activities of many general education schools actively involved in the Moscow municipal “Health School” program [2, 5]. Among other things, this positive practical experience of the program includes the so-called “health improvement support” being provided to the educational establishment that may be classified into the following three development vectors:

(a) Medical and hygienic support in the educational process that implies a variety of health and hygienic activities and procedures being implemented in the students’ daily routines (including vitamin additions, ionization of school venues, physiotherapeutic procedures, improved nutrition and strict regime of the educational process);

(b) Psychological and educational support in the educational process that implies a variety of psychotherapeutic procedures and collective communication and cooperation forms being implemented in the process to create a favourable and healthy psychological climate at school by a variety of means including the group/ individual psychological trainings, targeted cooperation in teams, autogenic training, relaxation, modern personality breeding forms, methods and tools duly customized for the age groups of the trainees etc.;  and

(c) Physical education support in the educational process that implies the students’ functionality being improved to increase the body resistivity to a variety of unfavourable external impacts with due emphasis on the educational domain of the school Physical Education curriculum being built up by new multisided physical education and health improvement practices, physical education and sports and new knowledge and self-reliant physical education methods designed to attain certain health-improvement and/or competitive goals etc.

Conclusion. In modern national school education system high priority should be given to the “health protection technologies” implementing in practices of the general education establishments as the means to improve the students’ health standards, and the following key actions are required for the technologies being successful:

– Develop and theoretically substantiate the consistent conceptual framework for the “health protection technologies”, their objectives and missions, structural basics and content;

– Create theoretically sound notions of the “desirable health model” for the modern school children, the model being viewed as a result of the “health protection technologies” as verified by the relevant specific progress criteria and the “hit targets” of the health activities; and

– Develop consistent approaches to the integrated health improvement process design for the national school education system based on the consistently interpreted notional base of the “educational technologies” and “project method” and the key health components applied by the WHO. 

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Abstract

The article analyzes the meaning of “health protection technologies” as a notion commonly accepted in the national school education system. Despite the long history of the term application in many aspects including the regulatory domain, there is still the need for commonly accepted content, structure and purposes of the “health protection technologies” being defined as a notion and phenomenon, otherwise the notional vagueness largely inhibits the initiatives to solve a variety of health problems faced by school children and keeps the vector of research within the historical frame of traditional school hygiene concepts. To clarify the notion and meaning of the “health protection technologies” and offer new approaches that may help solve the general-education pupils’ health improvement problems, the article explores the acceptability and potential benefits of a “project method” that is being widely applied in the modern educational process as a basis for a vast majority of popular educational technologies. Being focused on preset objectives, the project method gives the means to identify the core problem in the context of the result attainable by the systemic actions to improve the students’ health in the educational process, and develop design basics for the health improvement technologies in the context of the relevant identified content.