A post today from Education Week, Teens Overestimate Peers’ Involvement in Risky Behaviors, Study Finds, discusses findings that suggest that teens have misconceptions about peers engagement in a variety of health behaviors.

It supports the need for health educators to provide opportunities for students to share their perceptions and understandings of behaviors and to then address any misconceptions. It can be much more powerful for students when you can refute what they think (or knowing teenagers – what they know to be true)  rather than just presenting statistics – it can be very eye-opening and may “stick” better with students.

This would be a great article to use in an analyzing influences unit or a decision-making unit – students could discuss the implications of having these types of misconceptions – how might it affect decisions? How do peers influence our decisions? How does what we think our peers are doing influence our behaviors? What can we do about this? How do labels affect our perceptions? How do labels affect our actions?

This article could also support the need for school/community level data collection – citing national or state data is helpful but if you can have “their” data, it will make it much more meaningful.

Here are two articles both on a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience:

Harvard Scientists Studied the Brains of Pot Smokers, and the Results Don’t Look Good

Study of Pot Smokers’ Brains Shows That MRIs Cause Bad Science Reporting

These would be excellent articles to use to help students develop the skill of accessing valid and reliable information. There is a lot here to analyze and it is a topic that is both relevant and timely in light of changes in marijuana use laws across the country.

Sociological Images publishes images along with commentary meant to develop people’s “sociological imagination.” This is a great resource if you are looking for topics for discussion in your health education course! Topics on the site are wide ranging and all are associated with an image. You could provide students just the image for discussion, or the image and commentary and have students respond as a “Do Now,” or use the posts for more formal activities in which students have to analyze the images and connect to health behaviors/skills.

Most posts would fall under the “Analyzing Influences” skill. For example their most recent post, Herculean Dimorphism, discusses how modern versions of the Hercules myth show more dimorphism than ancient depictions and how the depictions of men and women in media can impact relationships and understandings of the roles of women and men. You could use this post in an activity in which students have to analyze the image and connect to societal norms, make connections to other media that show similar (or different) messages, discuss implications for this type of imagery especially since Disney movies are typically viewed by small children – how might this shape their understandings of themselves and relationships? This could even be tied to advocacy if students write letters asking companies to change the way men and women are portrayed  . . . many possibilities!

I follow their blog and there have been many posts I have flagged for use in my courses. This is an excellent resource if you are looking for thought-provoking conversation starters or prompts for activities in your health education course.