TEACHER EDUCATION AS A PROMOTER OF HEALTH: TEACHER STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ABOUT MEDICINE EDUCATION

Abstract

Being a part of health education from primary school to the university level, medicine education is a fairly new opening in the field of education. The purpose of this study was to clarify Finnish primary school teacher students’ (N=21) perceptions about medicine education. Data was collected in several ways: a questionnaire, shared blog writings and group discussions. Teacher students’ perceptions about the content of medicine education were quite limited. Although they were well aware of the importance of the proper use of medicines, they also highlighted the discussion of misuse, which is not in accordance with the aims and methods of medicine education. Teacher students only mentioned a few methods on how to teach the proper use of medicines, having themselves had few experiences of medicine education from their own time at school. In teacher education, medicine education could be developed using teaching methods that particularly concentrate on the critical search for information, also emphasizing the importance of modeling, and co-operation with parents and health experts. This study increases and broadens researchers’ and teacher educators’ knowledge about the challenges of medicine education both in teacher education and in schools. Key words: health education, medicine education, proper use of medicines, teacher education