The unique challenges related to building teams of teachers (and others) to improve programs and school practices has been discussed in educational research but less in health and social development. There is very little planning time in the teacher's work day, the regular working environment (the classroom) is isolated from other adults, teacher backgrounds are often derived solely from their previous experiences as students and their relatively low professional status makes other prone and willing to "fix the teachers" as their primary strategy.This is why the July 2019 issue of Educational Leadership should be of interest to school health & development advocates. The issue examines the barriers to teacher teams, "collective efficacy" as a driving concept, ensuring that team meetings work for teachers and treating teachers like professionals. Read more.....
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There has been increased attention to the beliefs and attitudes of teachers regarding health & social issues. However, the beliefs and attitudes of other professionals such as nurses and police officers that work with and in schools are less examined thus far in the research. An article in Issue #6, 2019 of Educational Psychology provides a tool that can measure professional commitment to social justice. The authors "demonstrate a method for answering this question empirically – cognitive diagnostic modelling (CDM). We used the four dimensions of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale (SIAS; Nilsson, Marszalek, Linnemeyer, Bahner, & Hanson Misialek, 2011 Nilsson, J. E., Marszalek, J. M., Linnemeyer, R. M., Bahner, A. E., & Hanson Misialek, L. (2011). Development and assessment of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 71(1), 258–275. doi:10.1177/0013164410391581[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) as attributes of SJA, and fit SIAS responses to a CDM of 16 attribute mastery profiles. One-quarter of the sample had a profile suggesting SJA attitudes without action; one-fifth, a profile suggesting monitoring SJA in politics without participation; and one-eighth, a profile suggesting individuals rarely engage in action without SJA attitudes. We also found significant relationships between mastery profiles and degree pursued, degree field, and political affiliation. These results demonstrated the utility of CDM for training program assessment of SJA." Read more...
An article in the July 2016 Issue of Journal of School Health reported on a survey of 240 teachers and found that Forty-eight percent of participants observed weight-related bullying in their school and 99% expressed the importance of intervening in such incidents. A large majority (75%-94%) supported 8 of the 11 policies, especially actions requiring school-based health curriculum to include content on eating disorder prevention (94%), and addressing weight-bullying through anti-bullying policies (92%), staff training (89%), and school curriculum (89%). Strongly supported policies were viewed by participants as being the most impactful and feasible to implement. Read more>>
(This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN) A study on the relationship between a schools’ health and teachers’ organizational commitment reported in Issue #4, 2015 of the International Journal of School Health confirms our intuitive guess, a healthy school means more committed teachers. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between schools’ organizational health and teachers’ organizational commitment in Shiraz high schools in Iran. "The findings indicated that schools’ organizational health and its dimensions including institutional integrity, consideration, resource support, morale and academic emphasis were at moderate level, but the initiating structure and principal influence were at low level. Also, teacher’s commitment and its dimensions (emotional commitment and continuance commitment) were at moderate level and normative commitment was at high level. The results showed that the correlation between schools’ organizational health and teachers’ commitment was 0.64, and the correlation coefficients between teachers’ commitment and institutional integrity, initiating structure, consideration, principal influence, resource support, morale and academic emphasis were 0.56, 0.44, 0.42, 0.22, 0.26, 0.16 and 0.65, respectively. The results indicated that the correlation between schools’ organizational health and emotional commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment were 0.62, 0.32, and 0.66, respectively. Finally, five dimensions of school health- institutional integrity, initiating structure, resource support, morale and academic emphasis positively predicted teacher commitment.". Read more>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)
A special section on the student effects on teacher behaviors and attitudes appears in in Issue #5, 2015 of International Journal of Behavioral Development. One of the articles explains the idea. "Classroom research has typically focused on the role of teaching practices and the quality of instruction in children’s academic performance, motivation and adjustment—in other words, classroom interactions initiated by the teacher. The present article presents a model of classroom interactions initiated by the child, that is, the notion that a child’s characteristics and active efforts may evoke different instructional patterns and responses among teachers." Other articles report that; (1) Elementary school teachers adapt their instructional support according to students’ academic skills, (2) children’s reading skills and interests affect teacher perceptions of children’s skills and individualized support, (3) there are reciprocal relations between student–teacher conflict, children’s social skills and externalizing behavior, (4) focusing on teacher–student interactions in a coaching program can eliminate the negative impact of students’ disruptive behavior on teacher perceptions and (5) children evoke similar affective and instructional responses from their teachers and mothers. Read more >> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Many of the national and provincial mental health strategies announced in recent years have included schools as a primary component, with teachers being critical, especially their "mental health literacy". An article in Issue #3, 2015 of School Mental Health reports on a small scale study that describes teacher perceptions of their role(s). It is noteworthy that teacher competence in MH is only one of the six factors identified as barriers by teachers. "This paper explores the teacher role in inter-professional collaboration in mental health promotion and identifies teachers’ perceived challenges to collaborative work in this field. Data are derived from a mixed method design, with three focus group interviews (n = 15) and survey research (n = 771) conducted with Norwegian K-12 teachers. The findings show that teachers perceive their gatekeeping role to be prominent, in that they are front line professionals to identify students’ mental health problems and, if necessary, make referrals to mental health services. However, teachers realize that mental health promotion encompasses more than the assessment of difficulties, and they call for more support and information through inter-professional collaboration in order to extend their engagement in student mental health beyond the gatekeeping role. Based on this, six main challenges to inter-professional collaboration are identified. These are the challenges of: (1) communication and confidentiality, (2) time constraints, (3) contextual presence and understanding, (4) cross-systems contact, (5) school leadership and (6) teacher competence in mental health." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An editorial and accompanying article on the impact of a program to prevent school violence in Uganda is both starling and controversial. It is so because the problem being addressed includes violence perpetrated by teachers. The editorial states" Still, despite its impressive findings (Of the Good School Toolkit) —a significantly lower rate of violence was reported in intervention schools relative to controls after 18 months, with no apparent adverse effects of the intervention—an astute reader will observe that the total efficacy of the intervention is modest. Even after this rigorous school-based intervention, almost a third of primary school children in the intervention group of the trial still reported one or more episodes of physical violence in the past week. This is violence perpetrated by school staff—acts that in other jurisdictions and countries could lead to severe reprimands, dismissal, or even incarceration. 434 children were referred to child protective services over the course of the trial, representing one in nine trial participants.". The study examined 42 randomly selected primary schools (clusters) from 151 schools in Luwero District, Uganda. The researchers report "We randomly assigned 21 schools to receive the Good School Toolkit and 21 to a waitlisted control group in September, 2012. The intervention was implemented from September, 2012, to April, 2014. Owing to the nature of the intervention, it was not possible to mask assignment. The primary outcome, assessed in 2014, was past week physical violence from school staff, measured by students' self-reports using the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Child Abuse Screening Tool—Child Institutional." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Volume 197, 2015 of Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences reports on a small qualitative study of teacher beliefs about school and classroom discipline. Although the study is small, the implications are significant, particularly, if, as we suspect, the views and beliefs of the teachers in this study do not differ greatly from teachers around the world. In the study, 20 teachers from primary and secondary schools were interviewed. Numerous concepts that teachers used to define the meaning of discipline were weighted according to the interviews. Among these concepts, the notions of "order" and "rules" were believed to be far more important to these teachers than other concepts such as ethics, compassion, determination, ability and an interactive process. In the middle ranking, but still far below the importance of order and rules, the concepts of volunteering, self-control, respect and adaptation to life were found. In other words, the traditional teacher beliefs and professional norms about student discipline appear to be well-reflected in this Turkish sample. Order and rules are paramount, the rest is much less important. Our only question is whether these views are consistemt with other teachers around the world. Read more>>
(From the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #1, 2014 of Child Development Perspectives reviews the research and broadens our understanding of why and how teachers respond to bullying. The analysis shows how teacher beliefs about bullying (being normative or not), their own sense of self-efficacy in delving into complex, private lives of their students and parents, their perceptions about emotional vs physical abuse/bullying and many other factors suggest that the issue and process is very complex. The article "provides a conceptual framework for examining the role of the teacher in the life of a child victimized by peers and for reviewing research. Central to this model is the teacher, who comes to the classroom with beliefs and experiences that affect teaching practices and relationships with students [3, 4]. A bidirectional arrow between the teacher and the victimized child depicts their unique dyadic relationship and the socialization processes that can occur within that relationship [5]. The intrapersonal characteristics of the child being victimized, in turn, shape how the teacher addresses the victimization. The teacher's ability to aid the victimized child also depends on interactions with the children engaging in the aggression, in part, driven by the characteristics of the aggressive children, their motivation for aggressing, and their modes of aggression. The actions of the teacher and children contribute to, and are influenced by, the larger classroom and school climate, including the quality of relationships among and between students and staff, norms for behavior, clarity and fairness of policies, organizational structure, and emphasis on academic success." Read more>>
(From the ISHN Member information service) An August 19, 2014 posting to the Teachers Blog from Education Week discusses the "the Unwritten Job Descriptions of Teachers in High-Needs Schools" and thereby underlines one of the challenges and dilemmas of their daily work and professional careers. The author, a woman, discusses her "worst class" and how the pre-dominantly male students in a class in a high needs, ubran school in a poor neighbourhood challenged her, her female co-teacher an dmost other authority figures in the school. She adds " A couple of the guys had terrible tempers, and managing their angry and unpredictable outbursts made me feel like I was walking on eggshells in my own classroom. When the principal and other higher-ups from the Board of Education would come in, instead of feigning interest in the class-work (as most groups of students would have, under those circumstances), they'd ask, "Why are these people here? Tell them to leave," as though we all spoke some other language that our visitors would not understand." She then describes the dramatic changes to their behaviours when a male teacher replaced her female colleague in the team teaching assignment. " In some way, we had become "mom and dad" (albeit, extremely hetero-normatively) for these guys. It was not only evident in their antics of trying to play one of us off the other; the young men in our class could sometimes be calmed down by "man-to-man" talks in the hallway with my team teacher, after which they'd come to me for hugs, band-aids, snacks, what-have-you."Years later, reflecting on that year, the female teacher realized that the students in that class had needed them as surrogate parents and that the real needs of those students were based on the need for secure social attachments with adults. She then briefly cites some of the recent research on this and criticizes the current efforts in the US to see education as a business, as a competition and as a workplace for students rather than a home away from home. Read the blog article here.
All this is not very new, any teacher can tell you about the kids in their class with the same needs. What was significant to me in reading the blog commentary was how the writer argues that " For teachers, this represents an added layer of responsibility, one for which we can't expect recognition within our formal evaluations, but which is nonetheless a vital component of doing our jobs well...particularly in high-needs schools in poor areas, where children are often coming from unsteady home lives.' While respecting and even agreeing that view as a former teacher, I am struck by the constant barrage of attacks on teachers these days. More testing, more accountability for students progress regardless of their effort or their families contribution, introduction of term-limited teacher licenses, unilateral legislative attacks on their bargaining agents, reductions in their pensions and so on. In what other profession, in what other industry, in what other corporation would the authorities really expect their employees to stay faithful to their altruistic, additional, uncompensated roles and additional unrecognized responsibilities, especially when assigned to the worst assignments?. Really. And then we have the well-meant, checklists, teacher-proof instructional programs and the fix-the-teacher "professional" development programs from the health and social program advocates constantly knocking on the school door.... This article and our additional comments here present one of the aspects of our global discussion of why the health and social sectors need to step back from their current appeals to schools and seek a new path that can lead to a systematic and teacher aware approach to the integration of these programs within the constraints, concerns and core mandates of education systems. Join us in our on-going, International Discussion Group and series of global symposiums. |
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