ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1607420
This article is part of the Research TopicPhysical Education, Health and Education Innovation-Vol IIIView all 12 articles
The teaching dilemma of health education teachers in China and path exploration: a cross-sectional study of Guangdong Province
Provisionally accepted
Zhen Wang1,2
Lin Zhu1,3*- 1School of Sport and Health, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou, China
- 2Research Center for Innovative Development of Sports and Healthcare Integration, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou, China
- 3Innovative Research Center for Sports Science in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: School-based health education is a major way to improve the health literacy of children and adolescents, the teaching difficulty of health education teachers will directly affect its implementation. This study aimed to understand the degree of teaching difficulty of health education teachers in Guangdong Province and to explore the influencing factors.Methods: A self-made questionnaire was used to survey health education teachers of 232 primary and secondary schools in Guangdong Province. The survey included three components: teachers’ basic information, teaching situation, and school level investigation. Data were analyzed using the chi-square test for single factors and a binary logistic regression model for multiple factors. Results: A total of 5416 (97.69% were valid) teachers responded to the questionnaire in the survey, and 44.26% were health education teachers. Health education teachers who were engaged in full-time jobs and had health-related training experience, and health education teachers whose schools provided uniform teaching materials and put a high value on health education, were less difficult to teach. Health education teachers whose schools had teaching standards and evaluation criteria were more difficult to teach. Among these factors, the occupation type and health-related training experience were the main factors affecting teaching difficulty.Conclusions: The teaching difficulty of health education teachers in primary and secondary schools in Guangdong Province is high. Strategies for building full-time health education teacher groups and enhancing health education training for teachers should be adopted to reduce teaching difficulty.
Keywords: school-based health education, Health Literacy, health education teachers, Teaching difficulty, Cross-sectional study
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 10 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lin Zhu, School of Sport and Health, Guangzhou Sport University, Guangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.