Is that my responsibility? Swedish pre-service teachers' readiness to work with children's health in their upcoming profession

This study examined pre-service teachers' perspectives on how well their teacher education prepares them to work with children's and students' health, and to what extent they feel responsible to work with this in their upcoming profession. 309 pre-service teachers from preschool, primary school, secondary school and continuing teacher education took part in an online survey. Chi-square tests, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), post hoc test Tukey's HSD, t-tests and Pearson rank-order correlations were performed to answer the research questions. The findings highlight that pre-service teachers do not feel well prepared but feel responsible for meeting the health needs of children and students. Pre-service teachers in preschool education report significantly higher levels of both preparedness and perceived responsibility compared to pre-service teachers in secondary education. Also, results suggest that pre-service teachers feel more prepared to support children's social and physical health than mental health, highlighting a potential gap in teacher education programs regarding mental health preparedness. Teacher education is seen as stronger in building understanding of mental health than in providing practical tools for health-promoting work, such as communication skills. To better prepare pre-service teachers, programs should include more practice-based exercises that address students' health needs. A key priority is strengthening communication skills and creating a collaborative health communication framework relevant to teachers and other professionals. Future research should further explore health-promoting teaching practices and develop health didactics as a practical classroom tool.