The meaning of the concept of health from the perspective of Primary school students - doi:10.5020/18061230.2008.p240

Abstract

Objective: To investigate how students from Primary school conceive the concept of health. Methods: The study, outlined on the basis of qualitative research, had as subjects children aged 9 to 12 years old, of two public schools located at the urban surroundings of a municipality of the Valley of Itajai Mirim River (Santa Catarina – Brazil). The data was obtained by graphic production, prepared by the students from the principles of free word association test. The corpus of the study consisted of 34 texts that were evaluated by Content Analysis. Results: The results showed that the word health is strongly associated to aspects relating to physical well being, by the adoption of body hygiene procedures. Conclusion: Based on the results, it was concluded that the studied subjects have a health concept that is markedly restrict to body hygiene procedures. This implies on the need to provide to teachers of these schools, training workshops that favor the understanding of a wider concept of health, associated to political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral and biological factors, in which health promotion is used as a strategy to modify these determinants.