How do Education researchers engage with the health society?

An exploratory review of Swedish doctoral dissertations in the discipline of Education from 2005-2019

Abstract

Since the emergence, in the 1700’s, of what is termed ‘the medical gaze’, individual health has increasingly come to be regarded as important not only to individuals but to society in general. Nowadays, not only is health regarded as a delineating factor of a functioning society, but modern society itself is by some referred to as a ‘health society’. Due to the ever-expanding importance given to health and health itself being understood as ‘do-able’, more and more facets of people’s lives have come to be regarded as relevant targets for health interventions. These interventions consist of planned, explicit health interventions and of immanent processes, within schools and education systems as well as outside of them.

While applied and critical research relating to the ‘health society’ may be found in the fields of Public health, Health promotion, Health education, Health literacy and Sociology of health, this study is specifically interested to explore how Education researchers engage with the ‘health society’. Education research primarily aims to develop knowledge about, or for, educational processes, activities and practices. Based on the sociological idea of Education as a field of knowledge that includes other forms of social and cultural reproduction than those restricted to school contexts or education systems, the article seeks to draw attention to Education research applied to the health society. The purpose with this exploratory review is therefore to investigate how the ‘health society’ figures in Swedish doctoral dissertations in Education. The research questions are:

• How does the ‘health society figure/emerge in Swedish doctoral dissertations in Education?
• What questions about the ‘health society’ are asked in Swedish doctoral dissertations in Education?

During the period 2005-2019, there were 917 dissertations in Education published in Sweden. Out of these, 76 doctoral dissertations were selected based on how their titles and aims fit with the criteria for inclusion and exclusion. The analysis explores how deeply, or superficially, the health society is treated and what dimensions of the health society that subsequently emerge, and how. The results show that the health society is weakly established as an area of research within the discipline of Education, and that the majority of studies concern health care, disease or diagnoses. The health society emerges primarily as a more or less explicitly expressed ‘context’ for Education studies and not necessarily as a specific field of interest. When the health society is the actual object of interest, the research is mostly concerned with producing knowledge on, or for health-promoting activities, exclusive of health care, or on educational processes involving health or well-being.

As such, the health society constitutes an untapped potential for research that could enrich the discipline of Education by providing a broader basis for both theory and method development within the subject. Such research might also make important contributions to educational processes in the field of health, through both applied and critical research.