Health education curricula in Canada: an overview and analysis
Daniel B. Robinson, Lauren Sulz, Hayley Morrison, Lindsey Wilson, Jodi Harding-Kuriger
Abstract
Health education (HE) curricula across Canada are developed by individual provinces/territories, enabling curriculum documents to be responsive to regional needs. However, this autonomy prevents Canadian teachers (and students) from having access to a consistent collection of curriculum competencies/outcomes. Without national HE curriculum competencies/outcomes, it is nearly impossible to design curricula that adhere to any shared ‘global’ curriculum agendas. Given this, Physical and Health Education Canada (PHE Canada) recently developed and released the Canadian Competencies for Physical and Health Education (CPHE Competencies). Within the CPHE Competencies are core HE competencies/outcome themes that are meant to be exemplars for education systems (K–12) across the nation. In this milieu, we have recognised a need to provide an overview and analysis of HE curricula across Canada. Our overview and analysis consider the following: allocated time for teaching and learning HE; age/contemporary relevance of HE curricula; and alignment with the CPHE Competencies.