Body Image – Positive School Cultures

This session focuses on creating a positive school environment to support young people’s body image. Designed for all staff, it offers guiding principles that can be applied across curriculum, wellbeing policies and programs and everyday interactions with students and colleagues, helping to build a shared understanding across the whole school community.   By challenging some of the beliefs about bodies, weight and health that influnece how we speak, teacher, and respond, staff can better support young people, themselves, colleagues and families. Six practical strategies are shared to help create a positive school culture; one that is BodyKind.

Key themes

• Understanding body image and key influences
• The continuum of attitudes and behaviours leading to body dissatisfaction, disordered eating and eating disorders
• Reflecting on societal beliefs around body size, weight and health
• Six strategies to creating a BodyKind school culture to support body image
  1. Encouraging BodyKind language
  2. Reviewing existing learning activities and resources – are they Body Kind?
  3. Applying a BodyKind lens to school policies
  4. Responding to student body image concerns
  5. Being a BodyKind role model
  6. Building an informed BodyKind community

Learning outcomes

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Understand the key influnces on body image
• Recognise how school environments, language and practice can support body image
• Identify attitudes and behaviours along the continuum from body dissatisfaction to eating disorder
• Apply practical strategies to strenghthen a positive school culture

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