Reimagining digital health education: Reflections on the possibilities of the storyboarding method

Abstract

Objectives:

To use the design method of storyboarding to challenge pre-service health education teachers to work together to think creatively and differently about digital health, to introduce pre-service teachers to the method as a pedagogical technique for use in their own classrooms, to experiment with our methods as a design sociology research project and to analyse the materials generated by the participants.

Design:

Storyboarding, a design research method for engagement and research that invites participants to generate a narrative using images and words, was used.

Setting:

We conducted a 3-hour workshop using storyboarding as part of an Australian university programme for pre-service health education teachers.

Method:

Following an introduction to the sociology of digital health and the possibilities of design methods, the pre-service teachers were formed into groups. Each group was provided with guidelines for imagining a new digital health device. They worked in their groups to generate a narrative in a storyboard format that described how this device would be used as part of everyday life. The groups then presented their storyboard to the class. The storyboards provided the research materials for analysing the sociotechnical imaginaries concerning digital health they presented.

Results:

We found that the storyboarding method worked well as an engaging and creative exercise for the participants and to generate insights for us as researchers on the ways in which they conceptualised and imagined the role of digital health technologies. However, despite attempts to educate the pre-service teachers in critical thinking in the lead-up to the workshop that emphasised the sociocultural and political contexts of health behaviours, their storyboards largely presented visions of digital health technologies that relied on individualistic behaviour change.

Conclusion:

After reflecting on the process, our conclusions provide some ideas for the way forward in using storyboarding as a transformative pedagogical and research tool.

Keywords

Critical pedagogy design methods design sociology digital health storyboarding method transformative pedagogy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adams

(2017) Ubiquitous digital devices and health: Reflections on Foucault’s notion of the ‘clinic’. In: Adams

Purtova

Leenes

(eds) Under Observation: The Interplay between eHealth and Surveillance. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 165–176.

Ayo

(2012) Understanding health promotion in a neoliberal climate and the making of health conscious citizens. Critical Public Health 22: 99–105.

Bardzell

(2013) What is critical about critical design? In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Paris, 27 April–2 May, pp. 3297–3306. New York: ACM.

Cahill

Coffey

Lester

, et al. (2014) Influences on teachers’ use of participatory learning strategies in health education classes. Health Education Journal 73(6): 702–713.

Carter

(2015) Making the blue zones: Neoliberalism and nudges in public health promotion. Social Science & Medicine 133: 374–382.

Cross

Warwick-Booth

(2016) Using storyboards in participatory research. Nurse Researcher 23: 8–12.

Devís-Devís

Pereira-García

Fuentes-Miguel

, et al. (2018) Opening up to trans persons in Physical Education–Sport Tertiary Education: Two case studies of recognition in queer pedagogy. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 23: 623–635.

Fane

Schulz

(2017) Working against ‘pedagogic work’: Challenges to engaging pre-service teachers in critical health education. Health Education 117: 511–528.

Fane

Pill

Rankin

(2019) How do preservice physical education teachers understand health education and their role as health educators? Health Education Journal 78: 288–300.

10.

Fitzpatrick

(2014) Critical approaches to health education. In: Fitzpatrick

Tinning

(eds) Health Education: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 173–189.

11.

Flash Eurobarometer (2014) European citizens’ digital health literacy: A report to the European Commission. Available at: http://observgo.uquebec.ca/observgo/fichiers/42526_res1.pdf

12.

Gard

Leahy

(2009) Dicing with death: Tensions, contradictions and awkward positions in school Health Education. In: Dinan Thompson

(ed.) Health and Physical Education: Contemporary Issues for Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 183–197.

13.

Gard

Lupton

(2017) Digital health goes to school: Implications of digitising children’s bodies. In: Taylor

Rooney

(eds) Surveillance Futures: Social and Ethical Implications of New Technologies for Children and Young People. London: Routledge, pp. 36–49.

14.

Jackson

Mazzei

(2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research. New York: Taylor & Francis.

15.

Jasanoff

(2015) Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In: Jasanoff

Kim

S-H

(eds) Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–33.

16.

Kimbell

(2011) Rethinking design thinking: Part I. Design and Culture 3: 285–306.

17.

Leahy

(2014) Assembling a health(y) subject: Risky and shameful pedagogies in health education. Critical Public Health 24: 171–181.

18.

Leahy

Burrows

McCuaig

, et al. (2016) School Health Education in Changing Times: Curriculum, Pedagogies and Partnerships. Abingdon: Routledge.

19.

Leahy

O’Flynn

Wright

(2013) A critical ‘critical inquiry’ proposition in health and physical education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education 4: 175–187.

20.

Leahy

Penney

Welch

(2017) Schooling health: The critical contribution of curriculum in the 1980s. History of Education Review 46: 224–235.

21.

Lupton

(1995) The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body. London: SAGE.

22.

Lupton

(2013) The digitally engaged patient: Self-monitoring and self-care in the digital health era. Social Theory & Health 11: 256–270.

23.

Lupton

(2014) Apps as artefacts: Towards a critical perspective on mobile health and medical apps. Societies 4: 606–622.

24.

Lupton

(2015a) Data assemblages, sentient schools and digitised health and physical education (response to Gard). Sport, Education and Society 20: 122–132.

25.

Lupton

(2015b) Health promotion in the digital era: A critical commentary. Health Promotion International 30: 174–183.

26.

Lupton

(2016) The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-tracking. Cambridge: Polity Press.

27.

Lupton

(2017a) Digital health now and in the future: Findings from a participatory design stakeholder workshop. Digital Health 3. DOI: 10.1177/2055207617740018

28.

Lupton

(2017b) Digital Health: Critical and Crossdisciplinary Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge.

29.

Lupton

(2018a) ‘Better understanding about what’s going on’: Young Australians’ use of digital technologies for health and fitness. Sport, Education and Society: 1–3.

30.

Lupton

(2018b) Towards design sociology. Sociology Compass 12: e12546. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.12546

31.

Martin

Hanington

(2012) Universal Methods of Design. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers.

32.

Miglioretti

Velasco

Celata

, et al. (2013) Teachers’ ideas about health: Implications for health promotion at school. Health Education Journal 72(6): 695–707.

33.

Rich

Miah

(2014) Understanding digital health as public pedagogy: A critical framework. Societies 4: 296–315. Available at: http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/2/296

34.

Sengers

Boehner

David

, et al. (2005) Reflective design. In: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on critical computing: Between sense and sensibility, Aarhus, 20–24 August, pp. 49–58. New York: ACM Press.

35.

St Pierre

Jackson

Mazzei

(2016) New empiricisms and new materialisms: Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 16(2): 99–110.

36.

Stoetzler

Yuval-Davis

(2002) Standpoint theory, situated knowledge and the situated imagination. Feminist Theory 3: 315–333.

37.

Swist

Collin

(2017) Platforms, data and children’s rights: Introducing a ‘networked capability approach’. New Media & Society 19: 671–685.

38.

Vander Schee

(2008) Consuming health and youth: Health curricula and the production of a healthy student. In: Boyles

(ed.) The Corporate Assault on America’s Youth: Commercialism, Exploitation and the End of Innocence New York: Peter Lang, pp. 1–26.

39.

Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority (VCAA) (2017) Health and Human Development Study Design 2018-2022. Melbourne, Australia: VCAA.

40.

Wherton

Sugarhood

Procter

, et al. (2012) Designing assisted living technologies ‘in the wild’: Preliminary experiences with cultural probe methodology. BMC Medical Research Methodology 12: 188. Available at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/12/188

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.28 MB