Education for health. Rationales, objectives and partnership practices

Good quality learning cannot be attained purely through transmissive teaching as learners should be the protagonists in re-organizing their knowledge and in building a new one under the direction of the teacher. Following this approach, it is essential that people link knowledge to action so that they actively work to change or improve their societies at a local level and beyond. According to this point of view, the teacher is considered as a facilitator, who puts the student in problematic situations to favour the elaboration of suitable strategies, poses proper questions to solicit creativity and reflection as well, while in traditional teaching the flow of information and interaction is limited to a one way direction (teacher towards pupils) leading to unsatisfactory results. In this process, a real partnership established involving students, teachers and researchers, will contribute to the professional development of all participants: everybody learns, researchers too, because their cognitive models are better shaped and enforced by practice. In the paper an example of the partnership is described.