A Novel Approach to Health, Wellness, and Character Education

This April, Steve Cicione, Founder/Director of True North Camp in Eastman, Qc, presented research on a novel pedagogical approach to health, wellness, and character education for adolescents. The research was presented at McGill University, as part of the Education Graduate Student Society's (EGSS) 15th Annual Conference, where the theme of Promotion, Prevention, and Intervention: The Ripple Effect of Small Changes Towards Healthy Living and Learning brought together researchers from a variety of education-related fields.

Steve's research entitled, The Case Method: A Vehicle for Teaching Adolescents How to Resolve Health- and Wellness-Related Challenges, seeks to examine the suitability of the case method, a discussion-based pedagogy, for delivering health education.

Commonly used in professional schools (e.g., business, law, medicine, etc.), the case method relies on the use of detailed narratives to capture the complexity and nuances of real-life problems, and encourages students to critically evaluate information and problem-solve from the characters' perspectives. The idea is to expose students to the "messiness" of problems as they occur in the field, allowing them to gain real-world experience without the real-world risk.

Similarly, in the context of health, wellness, and character education, a case-based curriculum might entail presenting students with vignettes of adolescent protagonists encountering health- and wellness-related challenges, then guiding them through a systematic process for identifying, appraising, and resolving such challenges. Furthermore, a case-based approach could serve to promote empathy among students as they gain a better appreciation for the contextual factors that underpin other people's behaviour - effectively reducing their tendency to make hasty, superficial judgments.

Steve plans to pilot elements of a case-based health education curriculum this summer as part of True North Camp's health and wellness program, and anticipates developing it further while pursuing graduate studies in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University in Montreal.

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For inquiries regarding the research, please contact Steve Cicione at [email protected]. To learn more about True North Camp, we welcome you to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or our website.