The school environment and student health: a meta-ethnography
Dr. Adam Fletcher (DECIPHer)
10.30, Wednesday 10 July. The Clubhouse, level 4
Using Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnographic approach, nineteen qualitative studies were synthesised to explore the processes through which schools may influences students’ health. These pathways remain largely unrevealed in quantitative studies. Four over-arching meta-themes emerged across these qualitative studies, which explored school influences on a range of different adolescent health concerns (including substance use, diet, sexual health, bullying and violence). First, aggressive behaviour and substance use are often a strong source of status and bonding at schools where students feel educationally marginalised or unsafe. Second, health-risk behaviours are concentrated in unsupervised ‘hotspots’. Third, positive teacher-student relationships appear to be critical in promoting student wellbeing and limiting risk behaviour, although certain aspects of schools’ organisation and educational policies constrain this. Fourth, unhappiness at school can cause students to seek sources of ‘escape’, either by physically leaving the school environment or through heavy substance use. These common features of schools which appear to shape student health-related behaviours (a lack of safety, disengagement, unsupervised spaces, weak student-staff relationships, stress, etc) are amenable to intervention and should be the subject of future investigation.