December 2005

Promoting Healthy Learning in Germany

EDC collaborates on project that links academic achievement to student and teacher health

How can we improve educational achievement by improving the health of students and teachers? What can we do to promote healthy learning?

These questions are central to a ground-breaking program in Germany designed to improve education by attending to the physical, social and mental health of teachers and students and the quality of the learning environment. Representatives from the German Bertelsmann Foundation recently visited EDC to describe and share this innovative project, Anschub.de, a collaboration between EDC-Europe, EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs (HHD), and many other European organizations.

Anschub.de addresses several indicators of German student academic achievement and health and social behaviors. According to the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Germany ranks 20th internationally with respect to reading competency and 22nd in mathematics. Additionally, the Robert Koch Institut found German students to have high levels of risky health behaviors: 38% of 12-15 year-olds smoke cigarettes, smoking an average of over 10 per day. Indicators of nutrition and physical activity among youth are also troubling. The links between health and academic achievement are demonstrated in a large body of literature, with risky behaviors, poor diet, and low levels of physical activity all negatively associated with a range of academic and achievement outcomes.

Unlike previous school health programs in Germany, Anschub.de sets out to establish a direct link between student academic performance and health.

“Anschub.de is different from the previous ‘health promoting schools’ model, which looked at the school as a place to carry out health promotion programs and which teachers saw as an add-on rather than being central to their educational mandate,” states Peter Paulus of the University of Lüneburg, Institute for Psychology and the scientific advisor for the Anschub.de project. “This program is different because it directly aims to improve academic outcomes using health as a means. Every school wants to be a good school and every teacher wants to teach well. We are demonstrating that we can help them achieve these outcomes through healthy teaching and learning.”

Anschub.de is supported by an Alliance of nearly 40 institutions in Germany, including health insurance companies, youth- education-, and health-related foundations, and ministries at the Bundesland, or state level. EDC’s HHD is one of the international members of the Alliance. Since September 2004, Anschub.de has been piloted in 40 schools in three different Bundesländer in Germany: Bavaria, Berlin, and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a former East German region.

One of the activities that HHD is carrying out in this partnership with Anschub.de is to create an advocacy tool that staff in Bundeslander across Germany can use to convince decision-makers to join the Anschub.de project. Earlier this year, EDC/HHD also developed a monograph titled, Developing Alliances to Improve Health and Education. This monograph has been translated into German and is now available as a resource on the Anschub.de Web site.

The Anschub.de process begins with schools conducting a self-assessment of their assets and needs. With the support of Anschub.de partners, schools develop their own goals and decide on the interventions that they would like to implement to make sustainable changes to the school setting for improving education and health. Anschub.de provides professional development workshops, modules for various topics, assessment and evaluation, financial and other support, as needed.

In Bavaria, for example, Eva Schorer is working with fourteen schools to develop and carry out activities designed to promote healthy behaviors and healthy environments.

“First we conducted an assessment in each school so that we could get an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each school and of the needs of teachers, students, and parents,” says Eva Schorer, the coordinator in Bavaria. The schools go on to carry out professional development programs for teachers, a range of activities for students, workshops for parents, and efforts to change the physical and social environment of the school.

“We want to make teachers’ lives easier and their work day more satisfying. Anschub.de contributes to that by fostering collaboration among teachers and between teachers and parents, and offering workshops for relaxation,” says Dr. Wolfgang Ellegast from the Bavarian Ministry of Education.

Teacher workshops in Bavaria focused on such topics as stress reduction for teachers, relaxation techniques, and the value of silence. These workshops were designed to give teachers new energy, improved confidence in decision-making, resistance to stress, and more patience, all attributes they can pass on to their students and families. One participant recalled, “When I came home after such a workshop, my family said, ‘You are so much more lively today. You should do this more often.’”

For parents, Anschub.de offered the “Wonderful Climate” workshop, which focuses on creating a positive climate at home through improved communication between parents and children and in social situations related to learning.

Activities for students are designed to engage their bodies and their minds and to encourage them to take good care of themselves and their environments. Some of the results of the student activities included:

• The creation of “green classrooms,” where students adopted plants and learned how plants improve the classroom environment by reducing noise, contributing to better humidity and less pollution, and sparking better social interactions among students and teachers.
• A daily schedule that includes built-in “moving around” breaks. A high school offers badminton and ropes to jump, and a vocational training center integrated more movement into classroom lessons. Another high school offers “jogging days” and requires students to make up physical education sessions that they miss.
• Pedometers distributed to students so that they can become more conscious of the distances they walk (and be motivated to walk further).
• Changes in the food choices offered during breaks. Schools started offering fruit during breaks and having vending machines restocked by a dairy company.
• A “Fistless” violence prevention curriculum to teach students to understand their feelings, control their impulses, and offer behavioral modification with interactive sessions such as role-plays and communication exercises.

The Bertelsmann Foundation, EDC’s division of Health and Human Development Programs, EDC-Europe, and other Anschub.de partners will continue to support the implementation of this program through 2007. Following the implementation period, the Bertlesmann Foundation hopes to expand Anschub.de to 10% of the schools in each of the 16 German Bundesländer. Meanwhile, Foundation staff are planning for the sustainability of the program, hoping to garner long-term support from the Bundesländer ministries of health and education and Alliance members.

The Anschube.de program is also expanding throughout Berlin, where it has reached out to large numbers of residents who are migrants, unemployed, or living near the poverty line. In the first year of the program, Anschube.de activities included a “physical activity construction site” for children to voluntarily engage in hopping, climbing, balancing; a workshop for teachers on stress and relaxation; and a workshop for mothers from Turkey about healthy nutrition, physical activity, and obesity. Activities at the Berolina high school included renovated and re-designed classrooms to create modern, subject-specific learning environments; a renovated and enlarged green school yard; and activities to promote a culture of acceptance and clear rules for behavior for students, including a “week of politeness” and an anti-violence training.

“We believe the content and message of our program is on target,” states Rüdiger Bockhorst of the Bertelsmann Foundation. “The feedback from schools is that they are in support of this. In Berlin, they plan to adopt the program across the entire region, in all 1,200 schools.”

Bockhorst believes the experience of the program in Berlin provides a model for the expansion of the model throughout Germany: “Initially, we encountered a challenge in implementing this program because it requires a conceptual shift for participants. But once people see how the program can help them reach the goals of their jobs, we receive more and more support.”

This story originally appeared on the Web site of EDC's Health and Human Development Programs

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