Health Education Development/Planning a group-based lesson

Now we are beginning to move to the business end of the semester in terms of developing an understanding of what it takes to create a funding submission for a health literacy activity. We will introduce some design concepts and a logical framework or logframe for thinking through how our assumptions, theories, activities, and resources might work together to produce outcomes that are desirable for a particular group of people. We will want to remember that health literacy has to do with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and resources required to achieve specific aspirations that individuals, groups, families, communities and, even, societies might have in terms of changes for the better.

Learning activity instructions

Each week we hold a lectorial and a tutorial. The lectorial is a lecture involving audience participation. The tutorials are for discussing the and group activities relating to the topic, and for working on the assignments.

Lectorial

Watch the videos in this playlist here.
Review the learning outcomes for this and previous topics and decide to what degree you are getting the point of the various topics and the whole subject to this point. How do you think that the materials, lectorials and tutorials are linked? How might your assessments be the clue?
Read the story for this topic and the background, and review learning outcomes here. If you have time, see if you can find and scan the references and resources.
Continue to read through and think about the various theories and models in Chapter Four of Health education: theoretical concepts, effective strategies and core competencies (WHO 2012) and read through Chapter Six (short chapter), Health education core competencies, pages 48-51.
Attend the lectorial and be prepared to work through an application of program logic to a particular situation.

Tutorial

Conclude forming your project team (<5 people) and together complete the Cooperative Learning Contract. Your team contract should be completed before your team facilitates its second group activity.
Review the activities for Team 1 (page 102) and Team 2 (page 106). The teams will have already been preparing; so, this instruction is for everyone else.
Attend the tutorial and be prepared to raise any questions about the Critical Essay.

What are the important program-logic considerations for Planning a group-based lesson?

This is the story as I remember it. However, I have a shocking memory. I may have gotten a point or two out of place or pulled in from another story. If I have, I beg your pardon. Still, it is such a good story that I cannot ignore it. In fact, it may take me three topics to tell it all. Here is how it begins. In a major Canadian city some years ago, a number of health professionals surmised that one of the impacts on health in a high rise estate was poor nutrition. They were most probably right in their assessment. Well, right in one way and wrong in another. Fortunately, they did see and concede this point fairly quickly. But, not quickly enough. The professionals worked together and cooked up (sorry could not resist) a nutrition program to teach to the residents of the estate. Bravely, in my mind at least, they began to knock on the doors of the apartments. If the door should open, and many did not, then, the health professions, which might have included a rehabilitation counsellor or two (you never know), asked whether the occupants would like to learn how to cook more nutritious food. As you can probably guess, they received the an answer in a number of ways that signified the same thing...'FXXX OFF.' This can be a demoralising response from the people that you have been trained to help improve (did I just say that?). So, the health professionals asked for a community development expert to help them. Fortunately, the person was not too much of an expert (my dad used to say that an ex- is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure; he liked those sorts of puns when I was a boy). Kindly, s/he suggested that perhaps they might wish to get to know the residents better and find out what they wanted in their lives. This they did. Eventually, the residents began to reveal the problems with nutrition for life that they were having in that place, at that time. This is, in a nutshell, the topic.

Background

For the next three topics, we are going to look at something of a gold-mine in terms of our work. I mean this both literally and figuratively. I know of funding bodies that actually look for the explicit use of program-logic in the funding submissions. Even when this is not explicit, it is often implicit. When you know how to write a proposal, whether for a lesson or a project, that incorporates a program-logic narrative, other people know exactly what you are on about and what they are going to get from your efforts. You also know what you are going to get. In fact, much of the Learning Management System (LMS) site being used by La Trobe University students is based on a program-logic approach and this brief description is part of the narrative. So is this wikiversity site. In this topic, we look at the issues relating to program-logic and planning. We will use the problematic of a 'nutrition for life' lesson to explore this topic each of the three weeks. Any planning process has to include an assessment of the needs and resources of the group or groups that you will be working with (De Jong & Miller 1995). Remember, we are following a 'strengths-based approach'. So, we will want to take account of the aspirations of people (Graybeal 2001). Aspiration is just a fancy (but important) word for discovering what makes people breath with excitement or anticipation (spiration). There are important guides for developing program logic models (THCU 2001). However, many just focus on the visual display or the bare-bones of the logic such as you will find in Macpherson's cooperative learning activities book. We will want to move to the narrative. A wonderful example of a steering committee using a program logic narrative to identify the contexts, issues, aspirations, capacities, resources and outlining the outcomes and strategies that might be useful from a planning perspective is found in Healthy Richmond: Narrative Explanation of the Logic Model (2010). You can find it online by putting the title into Google. Here is how the steering committe put their case to the funding body:

This document explains the Healthy Richmond Logic Model--a picture that describes the priority outcomes, suggested strategies to reach the outcomes, and the resources and capacities needed in the community to achieve success. While the logic model is a highly summarized planning document that may not include each idea proposed by the hundreds of people who gave input to this process, this narrative explanation of the HR Logic Model hopefully recaptures many of these ideas. Sub-strategies are suggested that continue or expand existing programs, or point the way to new efforts. The HRSC hopes that with support from the California Endowment and other funders, the dreams and hopes that underpin this plan will be realized in the months and years to come. (HRSC 2010:1)

References and Resources

De Jong, P. and Miller, S.D. (1995) How to interview for client strengths. Social Work. 40(6):729-736.

Graybeal, C. (2001) Strengths-based social work assessment: Transforming the dominant paradigm. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services. 82(3):233-242.

HRSC (2010) Healthy Richmond: Narrative Explanation of the Logic Model (Submitted to the California Endowment Building Healthy Communities Initiative November 1, 2010). Richmond, CA: Healthy Richmond Steearing Committee.

THCU (2001) Logic models workbook (Version 6.1). Toronto, ON: The Health Communication Unit, Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this topic, through your own investigations, group preparation, tutorial participation and lectorial explorations, you should be able to:

Outline the basic aspects of a program-logic (pro-log) or logic-framework (log-frame) and explain their importance in terms of a narrative account of the reasons for various practices relating to assessing and planning, as well as implementing and evaluating lessons.
Distinguish various ways of displaying a ‘program-logic’ narrative for the purpose of planning a health education session relating to a two-hour ‘mental health first-aid’ lesson in terms of various domains and styles of learning.
Select an appropriate means of assessing the needs (e.g. felt, normative, expert, comparative, etc.) of various groups within a community and explain the reasons for this selection.
Work out the steps to be taken to develop lessons that take into account and validate the aspirations and concerns of various class, gender and ethnicity-based groups (e.g., who, what, how, why, when, where?).