Life skills and health literacy teaching

The AHI HPS model moves beyond the dated believe that risk awareness raising programmes lead to behavioural change. AHi HPS model uses a combination of interventions to facilitate behaviour change. It includes human development and health teaching. Health teaching aims to provide access to health-related knowledge, attitudes, values, and developing a healthy lifestyle. Low health literacy is an obstacle to adopting a healthy lifestyle. Human development teaching aims promoting emotional development of school children. It focusses on psychological determinants behavioural change and resilience. It includes promoting emotional intelligence, coping mechanism, self-esteem, attachment (e.g.: family ties, friends/friendship ties), social cohesion and social skills (e.g.: caring for oneself and others, reciprocity, tolerance of others, trust, respect, kindness, compassion), and aspiration. Both promote intellectual development of school children. They help school children in taking control over life's circumstances by improving their cognitive processes. This includes promoting attention, perception, memory, language, learning, and higher reasoning facilitating decision-making and problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and empathy, assertiveness and self-control. Developing these attributes improves schoolchildren’s resilience and ability to cope with emotions and stress leading to healthy lifestyle, good health and wellbeing.

The AHI HPS model understands education in a broader way rather than is traditionally the case. AHI teaching approach is one where the schoolchild voice is placed at the centre, and a democracy is put into the classroom. Value is placed on discovering solutions together.  Each E-learning presentation of a health-related risk behaviour topic (traditional health education) is followed by a school quiz game, a debate, a topical based group discussion and a concluding session when the schoolchildren set a goal aiming a behaviour change. In the group discussion the instructor interacts with the children to address knowledge gaps identified in the quiz game and to identify solutions to the barriers identified in the debate. Goal setting is in the hands of the schoolchildren and they must set them. The coach may need to help them setting the goal through questions such as "what will you do?" or "what would you like to get out of this topic?" The same process adopted to deliver the health coaching is used to deliver the life coaching. The interaction with children is not authoritarian and blaming the victim is avoided. It is crucial to listening to their challenges in order to help them to identify solutions to the barriers to adopt good social and health behaviour, as well as, developing critical thinking among them.