EXSC385 - Challenges and Opportunities in the Health of Young People

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Unit rationale, description and aim

Professionals working with adolescents require contemporary knowledge, understanding and skills to reflect on and engage with issues related to adolescent health and wellbeing from a socio-cultural perspective. In this unit, students will learn about and put into practice the skills to analyse determinants of health, seek out adolescent agencies, investigate health promotion strategies, and evaluate priorities and recommendations that support adolescent health. Students will be equipped with the knowledge, reflective experiences, observations and strategies required in the professions of adolescent health and teaching for their future practice. The aim of this unit is to raise awareness, inform and develop harm minimisation, and prevention/intervention strategies around the challenges and opportunities in adolescent health. This unit will also focus on providing students with an appreciation of social justice, an understanding of equity and a respect for the human person.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Evaluate an agency that provides services to young people by explaining theories/approaches informing the service/agency, and critically reflect on the learnings gained (GA1, GA2, GA4)

LO2 - Plan and develop an adolescent health promotion campaign to raise awareness, using prevention and/or intervention strategies (GA7, GA8, GA9, GA10)

LO3 - Plan and design a mechanism to suggest priorities and recommendations in adolescent health and wellbeing (GA5, GA8, GA10)

LO4 - Analyse and evaluate the determinants of health related to adolescent health and wellbeing (GA4, GA8)

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA7 - work both autonomously and collaboratively 

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

GA10 - utilise information and communication and other relevant technologies effectively.

Content

Topics will include: 

• Adolescent identity – Challenges and opportunities
• Socio-cultural, physical, political and socioeconomic determinants of health. Burden of disease and risk factors (eg cancer, mental health,)
• Socio-cultural influences on adolescent health: Analysis of risk factors (eg smoking, alcohol, drug use, unsafe sexual practices, risk behaviours, personal and environmental factors, analysis of protective factors)
• Life skills and consumer health (eg accessing adolescent health services, media literacy)
• Road safety
• Personal safety and child protection issues
• Understanding theories of health behaviour changes (Health Belief Model, Theory of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour, transtheoretical or Stages of Change Model, Social Cognitive theory)
• Adolescent health issues (eg cybersmart, nutrition, body modification, male mental health, grief and trauma)
• Health Promotion (Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention)
• Teaching pedagogy principles
• Strategies and activities for the classroom
• Information Communication Technology (eg blogs, e-portfolio’s)

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit employs student-centred teaching and learning strategies based on the principles of constructivism and reflective practice. Students will construct new meaning (build on prior knowledge) and make sense of what they are learning, why they are learning this and how this learning is applied. These strategies encourage independent and life long learning, where students take responsibility for their learning. The learning tasks are authentic (engage in tasks that are real), reflective (deep learning) and collaborative (engaging and working with peers). Student centred strategies include reflective writing, critical thinking activities, co-operative/ collaborative learning, incorporating Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and peer/independent learning. These strategies link directly to the assessment tasks, as the assessments are a teaching and learning strategy in itself. These strategies have been chosen to give students opportunities to actively engage with the content and to provide variety within the tutorial and assessment tasks. The knowledge and skills acquired can be applied and are relevant to what is required in real world situations and for future profession/practice/workplace.

Assessment strategy and rationale

Employers today seek more than knowledge from students, they want them to transfer learning to real situations, and problem solve and have higher order thinking skills. Authentic assessment provides students with these skills, because the tasks are real, meaningful, require judgment and innovation and are related to one’s workplace, personal and social life. Students learn in different ways, professionally we need to explore and provide opportunities so they perform to their very best, feel worthwhile, empowered and enjoy learning. In order to best enable students to achieve unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes, standards-based assessment is utilized, consistent with University assessment requirements. 

A range of assessment strategies are used including: 

1. Reflective Writing: Agency Visit - This assessment provides opportunities for students to visit agencies/organisations that support young people facing challenges and provide coping strategies.
2. Students reflect on what they have learnt/ observed from this experience and how this knowledge, and skills can be applied to their future professions. Students learn much about themselves and reflect on how this experience may have changed /influenced their earlier perceptions and assumptions about the challenges and opportunities in adolescent health.
3. Collaborative Learning: Health Promotion Campaign - In groups you are to plan and present an Adolescent Health Promotion Campaign for either schools or a local community group aimed to raise awareness and develop prevention and or intervention strategies for a current adolescent health issue. This assessment type will prepare students for real life situations in their future practice/profession.
4. Reflective Writing: Reflective Blog- This assessment strategy is a means to capture reflective thinking and writing using technology. Students will design and develop a reflective digital blog about adolescent health as evidence of learning in the unit. The site structure should clearly reflect your introduction and your professional profile/philosophy, as well as two critical reflections (posts/entries) related to the health and wellbeing of young people.

This unit contains a Graded Hurdle tasks whereby a particular assignment is the only assignment piece to assess one or more of the learning outcomes of the unit. This can occur when it is deemed necessary to have an explicit learning outcome linked to a key piece of skill or knowledge students are expected to develop within the unit and an assignment is developed to ensure it assesses this learning outcome effectively. This is the case within this unit as it forms part of the collection of units required for students to have Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) as a teaching area once qualified. These units are designed to meet the entry conditions of post graduate teacher training courses as well as state-based PDHPE teacher registration requirements.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Bennett, D, Towns, S, Elliott, E & Merrick, J. (2020). (Ebook)Challenges in adolescent health: An Australian perspective. Nova Science Publishers: New York. 

Fleming, M L, & Baldwin, L. (2020). Health Promotion in the 21st Centry: New approaches to achieving health for all. Routledge: Australia.

 Keleher, H., & C, MacDougall. (2015). Understanding Health: A determinants approach. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 

White, R., Wyn, J., & Robards, B. (2017). Youth and Society (4th edition). South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.