1. The Principles of Good Drug Education
Choosing the best approach to drug education is a key task for educators. There is no shortage of
guidance, information, and materials but choosing the most relevant and supportive for the group
or groups you lead depend on a number of factors.
This document aims to help you understand the principles that lie at the heart of good practice;
those that follow have been adapted from the latest best-practice evaluations carried out in the
UK, Canada, Australia, the USA, by the United Nations and in other countries.
There is more information and material to support this paper on our website.
The Principles
1. Environment: Good drug education is... Is responsive to different cultural views
and realities
Underpinned by a whole school Includes a normative component
approach Keeps up-to-date with evidence
Enhanced by family-based prevention
programmes 4. Content: The selected materials and
activities …
2. Planning: An appropriate curriculum is...
Explore attitudes to drugs and drug
Relevant and responsive to the users
developmental stage and Provide children and young people
circumstances of the children and with opportunities to develop social
young people (see Needs Assessment skills
below) Use credible, reliable and up-to-date
Taught in the context of other sources explore, contrast, and, where
personal, social and health issues. appropriate, support (or challenge)
Manageable given available attitudes to self and others, to drugs, to
resources drug use and non-use - and to drug
Informed by programmes that users and non-users
produce achievable outcomes Strengthen protective factors
Developmental: re-visited, Minimise risk factors
consolidated and extended
throughout childhood and youth 5. Evaluation: The programme is informed
Supported by appropriate training by...
Evidence based and/or evaluated
Assessment
3. Practice: The educator... Monitoring
Impact evaluation
Creates a comfortable classroom
climate
Uses interactive teaching styles
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