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Although traditional health education topics remain important areas to cover in school-based health education, new youth health priorities related to use of technology devices and to social media practices emerge as twenty-first century youth health and safety trends. In 2011, secondary pre-service teachers (PSTs; student teachers) held conversations with teenagers about important influences on and events in the young people's lives. The conversations provided a base for course assignments, which later became key data for the study reported here. One requirement of the assignment was that the PSTs write about their impressions of technology and social media use on young people's health and well-being, and based on their impressions, to predict implications for their own practices as future secondary health education teachers. These two major themes – how they might use technology in their own teaching practices in health education and their perceptions of health risks implicit in technology use that need to be included in school-based health education – are discussed here. Data were also examined for evidence of PSTs’ demonstrations of socially critical awareness of techno-devices and social media as social determinants of youth health.

Previous studies into alcohol and recreational aquatic activity amongst youth have found that alcohol is widely used in association with recreational aquatic activities in New Zealand (NZ), and young people accept alcohol consumption as an embedded practice. In NZ, certain youth actions in, near or on water, could be defined within a ‘kiwi youth culture’ context, given that these voluntary risk-taking practices are quite wide spread and entrenched, and thus have an element of being culturally defined in that they link to a national proclivity to participate in sometimes high-risk fun. Early in 2011 we undertook a small research project that sought to build on other studies' findings that, for young people, mixing alcohol and aquatics is not uncommon and can put young people in danger. Focus group interviews with 17–24-year olds sought to gain insight into young people's attitudes towards and experiences of alcohol consumption in and around water, and their perceptions of risk levels associated with consuming alcohol during recreational aquatic activities. This paper reports themes to emerge from the focus group interviews, and that support findings from previous research.

Health education in New Zealand schools has a chequered history, peppered with controversy since its inclusion as a school subject in the early nineteenth century. In this paper we examine the trials and challenges faced by health education teachers over time, pointing to the particular components of this subject that are regarded as controversial and analysing the obstacles to its successful implementation. We briefly map the changing nature of health education across time, before discussing contemporary aims and purposes of health education. We suggest health education seeks to enable and equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and motivation to make health enhancing choices for themselves and for others. To conclude, we explore future directions for health education, proposing several health competencies as viable options for a 21st century world.