International Enlightenment and the Chinese Approach to Cultivating Health Education Literacy among Physical Education Teachers

Initiated by the Yangzhou Conference, propelled by curriculum standard reforms, and capitalizing on the Healthy China initiative, China has placed growing emphasis on fostering health education literacy among physical education teachers. Through an analysis of national standards and curricular frameworks for physical education teacher education, this study identifies areas for improvement, including mandatory competencies, practicum, and course diversity. Internationally, the United States and Australia exemplify robust models, prioritizing hands-on health education components and ensuring training quality through evidence-based benchmarks, offering valuable insights for China’s approach. The study advocates for strengthening top-down policy design by establishing a collaborative “national-local-societal-institutional” framework; empowering professional organizations to enable grassroots-driven training initiatives; redesigning physical education programs to integrate practice-oriented health education courses; and developing standardized professional criteria to ensure systematic quality assurance.