This study aims at measuring the gap eventually existing between health education implemented by the Lebanese education system and the international recommendations. It also aims at analyzing the contribution of education in promoting Lebanese students' health and in their overall development. We adopted a mixed methodological approach combining qualitative descriptive analysis and quantitative statistical analysis. The content analysis of both the curriculum and the national Life Sciences textbooks of all the fourteen grades, show that health education is designed according to a linear logic of cause and effect, at the expense of systemic approaches which are closer to the complexity and problems that need to be solved in the field of health. This reification is an obstacle to building links between the concepts taught to induce conceptual changes and behavioral health among students. The typological analysis performed on the data collected via interviews with 44 Lebanese Life Sciences teachers, in 24 public and private schools in Beirut, led to the identification of various types of epistemological, didactic, ideological and psychological obstacles. These teachers need some training in health education based on an ecological approach to enable them to move from a biomedical to a heuristic and complex conception. Similarly, the typological analysis performed on a questionnaire that 1366 students in grades six, nine and twelve took, revealed the absence of a health education based on a comprehensive and contextualized approach for the development of cognitive, methodological and psychosocial skills. In this perspective and for a more effective promotion of health, we conclude this study by issuing recommendations for the better integration of complexity in health education in Lebanon.
Health education in Lebanese schools: from a biomedical analytical approach towards a biopsychosocial ecosystemic perspective. Study of the Lebanese Curriculum, of the textbook of Health Science and of the conceptions of teachers and pupils concerning Health education in public and private schools of Beirut