Teaching aims

According to the school curriculum, the starting point of health education is health understood as physical, psychological and functional capacity. Teaching has to be based on the everyday life of children and young people, and on growing up, development and the course of life.
Lifegame has two main objectives:

Objective 1: to give substance to the perception of health as a multidimensional issue
The usual way to approach health issues is to start with risk factors. However, Lifegame?s conception of health is broad and includes many facets. Sometimes the consequences of choices made can be contradictory: a decision may be positive in terms of physical health, but may also be unfavourable for social relations, or vice versa. In Lifegame, risks are also considered as ways of coping: even choices that are negative for physical health may work as ways to manage in daily life. Decisions are really about the values and needs facing an individual in a certain situation.

In Lifegame the character adopted by the player proceeds from childhood to old age, making decisions at each phase of life. The aim is to encourage players to consider how a person?s needs and aims in different dimensions of health vary with their situation and age. Players learn to put themselves in someone else?s shoes and view everyday situations according to life?s different stages.

Objective 2: to relate health to everyday choices
Health is not something to be looked after in isolation. Instead, it accrues and depletes according to our daily activities. Lifegame aims to encourage players to understand how the choices they make effect all aspects of health. The player is responsible for the choices they have made, as in their own life. In addition to reflecting on your own habits and customs, Lifegame may also be used to outline such things as school activity: what things are related to health at school and how do they influence the different dimensions of health?

In its subject matter, Lifegame concerns the multidimensional character of health, choices and decision-making, risks and coping ? and the means of doing so in the context of life?s different stages.