The Salutogenic Teaching Movement: Celebrating our Global Collaboration

13. August 2026

Posted by: Jake Sallaway-Costello, Marguerite Daniel, Lenneke Vaandrager

In November 2023, we reflected in a STARS blog on the important role salutogenesis plays in teaching, with our colleague Eva Langeland. This body of work emerged from a seed of pedagogic vision: Langeland wrote in the Handbook of Salutogenesis that salutogenic educators should concern themselves with “what to do”, “how to do it”, and most importantly, “how to be it”. Introducing these concepts at a workshop on teaching and learning at the 7^th International Conference on Salutogenesis (Lodz, Poland) in June 2024, a colleague proposed there was a missing question regarding the “why” of teaching, as educational philosophies fundamentally shape pedagogic inquiry and teaching practice. Reaching beyond Antonovsky’s original salutogenic question of “what creates health?”, we proposed the salutogenic teaching question: “how can teaching and learning make people healthy?”.

This well-attended, noisy, energised workshop showed us there is demand for further discussion and debate: salutogenic educators from all over the world found their pedagogic innovations and reflections were too great to share in just 1 hour. Sensing a shared need for pedagogic discussion, we launched the “Teaching Salutogenesis Writing Project”, to explore the diversity of global practices seeking to answer the salutogenic teaching question. Breaking down Langeland’s three teaching concerns, and retrospectively starting them with the newly added “why?” of salutogenic teaching, we proposed a global writing collaboration across four pedagogic journal articles.

Why? How can salutogenesis inform teaching philosophies that shape our practice, and what makes salutogenic teaching different from other paradigms?
What? Which salutogenic concepts do we teach in different disciplines, and how do we build salutogenic curricula for health promotion and beyond?
How? What practices can educators use in the classroom to deliver teaching in a salutogenic way, and how can we ensure assessment values salutogenic ideals?
How to be? Can educators live, breath and role model salutogenesis for their students, and form communities of educational practice around salutogenic living?

Our global writing collaboration involved 21 educators, from 10 countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), learning from each other’s experiences. There was a great diversity of interdisciplinary thought, contributed by educators teaching university courses in global development studies, nutrition, nursing, psychology, sport science, architecture, medicine, and traditional salutogenic domains of public health and health promotion. The collaboration expanded beyond higher education, also valuing contributions from teacher and workplace training. Over a 2 year period, the pedagogic papers developed and we are delighted to share their publication in the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education. You can access the papers using the links below. We invite salutogenic educators everywhere to read, reflect, and join the conversation: how does your teaching make people healthy?

We are particularly proud to hear how meaningful educators found it, to participate in such a unique global effort to advance this area of pedagogy. Frédérique Renard felt “deeply honoured to collaborate with you all”, while Gwendolijn Boonekamp reflected that “It was a pleasure to contribute to this project, and it is something people are really looking for: how to teach salutogenesis”. Magdalena Blazusiak was proud to have “been part of a beautifully collaborative effort”, providing her with an opportunity to write about how salutogenic concepts are important in studies of the built environment. Likewise, Marie Swettenham voiced she “was so fortunate to be invited to contribute to this international collaboration, with colleagues who are passionate about advancing salutogenesis and how we teach it!”. One of the most meaningful outcomes of the writing project, and the Lodz workshop that initiated it, was that salutogenic educators who met in Poland continued supporting each other after they went home, even teaching on each other’s courses. Thinking about her friendships with Magdalena and Marie, Helena Pombares, reflected:

“A conversation becomes a connection.
A connection becomes a friendship.
A friendship can become a collaboration.
And sometimes, those collaborations become publications”

But the salutogenic teaching journey does not end here! Indeed, it is just beginning. This body of work, grown organically from the interests of the Global Working Group on Salutogenesis and now involving educators from many nations, invites your ongoing input. Our summary reflections in the final paper outline what we consider to be some of the most immediate areas for pedagogic inquiry in this new salutogenic teaching movement. Conceptually, there is a need to differentiate between coherent and salutogenic learning, and align ideas from across the four papers to theorise a whole-process salutogenic learning experience. Empirically, research is needed to show how salutogenic teaching transforms practice, and impacts lives. Professionally, we advocate the adoption of salutogenic teaching as a fundamental pedagogy in educator training. A school or university somewhere will be the first to make salutogenic teaching and learning their standard practice: could it be where you teach?

The next step for the salutogenic teaching movement will take place at the 8^th International Conference on Salutogenesis in January 2027. We look forward to welcoming global educators to Concepcion, Chile, where we will be building a manifesto for the salutogenic teaching movement, towards further collaboration, criticality, and celebration of meaningful teaching and learning.