School health lecturer training for Cambodia in Japan

Tokyo Gakugei University (TGU) is carrying out the “School Health for all Cambodian (SHCC)”project (Project Leader: Professor Dr. Takashi Asakura). This project is sponsored by The Nippon Foundation.

SHCC started in 2020 and provides comprehensive school health training for lecturers in charge of school health classes at two teacher education colleges in Cambodia, including the contents of school health textbooks developed by the project.

Usually, the training is mainly conducted in Cambodia, but training in Japan was conducted from September 8 to 15. A total of 14 participants came to Japan from Cambodia, including the director and vice director of Battambang Teacher Education College, and nine lecturers from Phnom Penh Teacher Education College and Battambang Teacher Education College.

The main contents of the training program in Japan were observation tours of Japanese junior high schools and explanations of textbooks in the junior high school curriculum.
During the school visits, the participants visited TGU Attached Koganei Elementary School, TGU Attached International Secondary School, Machida City Minami Junior High School, and Zama City Sagami Junior High School.
They observed health classes by physical education teachers and health guidance by yogo teacher (school health teacher) and others. During observation in health room, many questions were posed to yogo teacher about health issues for students and how to deal with them.

On another day, they attended lectures by Professor Takashi Asakura about the current situation of schools in Japan, Associate Professor Megumi Kagotani of Kyorin University on “Child Health,” and Professor Chikage Saito of Saitama University about the history and changing role of health rooms in Japan.”

Both at the schools and during the lectures, there were active question-and-answer sessions focusing on the content of the lectures, which were in line with their own training objectives.