Introduction:

We know little about how the messages about health promotion issued by social institutions are being received and interpreted by schoolchildren.

Objective:

To analyze the influence of messages from the discourse of social institutions in the construction of ideas about the health of schoolchildren.

Method:

Observational, descriptive and interpretative study under the qualitative research paradigm. The sample is non-probabilistic, intentional or rational, non-discriminatory and equitable composed by 27 students of compulsory secondary education. Fieldwork has been developed in three educational centers. As main tools were chosen the focal group, participating observation and field notes, thus allowing to perform a triangulation of the data. A content analysis of the discourse of schoolchildren was carried out with the help of QRS N-Vivo 10 software. To describe this pedagogical process of adapting the social discourse on health were taken into account the concepts of recontextualisation and biopedagogy that has been developed by Basil Bernstein and Valerie Harwood based on Michael Foucault researches.

Results:

The mother of schoolchildren and the media are the most influential social agents in their ideas about health. Schoolchildren link being thin with being healthy and obesity with being sick.

Conclusions:

After the recontextualisation, the students assume that an optimal state of health can be achieved by controlling body weight. The assumption of these biopedagogical discourses can favor conflicting relations among the schoolchildren and their body.

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