The purpose of this study was to examine some basic underlying assumptions of health instruction to begin to determine if they are justifiably held. A number of assumptions related to student cognitive and affective skill development, students' perceptions of teachers, characteristics of instruction and demographics were incorporated as predictive variables in a structural model with student attitude and behavioral change as criteria. Student and teacher questionnaires were developed and administered to a sample of 588 students and 26 health teachers in the seven-county, southeastern Michigan area to gather data for testing the model. A series of multiple regression analyses were performed and established that predictive variables were significantly (P < 0. 01) related to student-perceived change. It was found that student-reported health behavior change was related to their development of higher level cognitive and affective functioning. Furthermore, both perceived skill development and perceived behavior change were dependent upon the students' perception of the teacher — a component which is seldom included in underlying assumptions made about health instruction.