(From the ISHN Member information service) A May 2014 report on the preparation of Canadian teachers to promote mental health in their initial teacher education or pre-service university programs found a number of gaps. The researchers noted that (1) only two courses among the 50+ education faculties across all provinces and territories met all four criteria for a mental health literacy course for teacher candidates, (2) many courses took reactive approaches to a minority of students in need when considering mental health—dealing with students already in emotional crisis, students demonstrating behavioural challenges, or students at risk of school failure because of emotional difficulties. In contrast, physical “health” courses tended to take a proactive or protective approach for all students, helping all students develop healthy eating habits and teaching students to enjoy regular physical exercise. (3) Though some programs opted to conceptualize this area as “mental health” and “psychological health” or “psychological well-being” , many programs broadened their conceptualizations to “holistic health”, “whole child health”, and “comprehensive health and wellness” as reflected through course offerings. These differences are not only linguistic but also indicative of dynamic changes in the field. We found that while some courses referenced specific mental health challenges—such as stress, anxiety, depression, anorexia etc.—others, in contrast, focused on the cultivation of qualities or skills, such as empathy, hope, sustainable happiness, appreciation, and positive relationships. Thus, in order to design and offer more classes to our country’s B.Ed. students, we need to understand and come to a common conceptualization of what exactly comprises mental health and well-being." Read more>>
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From the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #1, 2014 of Physical and Health Education Academic journal review the socialization of PE teachers. The authors note that "Teacher socialization is a term used to describe the socializing processes that influence a teacher’s beliefs, assumptions, and values regarding teaching. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teaching is greatly influenced by a teacher’s early socializing experiences. Using Lortie’s (1975) theoretical framework, Lawson (1983a) identified three main kinds of socialization that teachers face: (a) Acculturation: this includes actions, beliefs, and value systems that are learned from birth and foster ideologies about, in this case, professional conduct. (b) Professional socialization: this is the process through which prospective and practicing teachers learn and maintain the values deemed ideal for teaching physical education. Professional socialization is strongly influenced by recruits’ experiences as a K-12 school student (the period of time described by Lortie (1975) as the apprenticeship of observation). These experiences inform recruits’ subjective warrant, which consists of their beliefs about the requirements for being a physical education teacher. (c) Organizational socialization: this process serves to maintain the “traditional skills” valued by institutions and organizations. Organizational socialization may work against change in order to uphold traditions and routines." The review (full text available free) concludes that "there have been several patterns to emerge in socialization research since 2000, most notably in the increasingly progressive, “teaching-oriented” views that many physical education recruits now hold. In particular, the findings suggest that teaching orientations are now more prevalent in recruits than they were prior to 2000. Attached to this finding is a general pattern that physical education teachers today are more likely now than in the past to develop a student-centered holistic approach to teaching physical education that develops the “whole-student”, one who is socially responsible and aware. While there appears to be less evidence supporting the presence of coaching orientations in recruits which is likely due to a change in the modern recruit’s acculturation, we feel that this finding should be treated with caution, as it does not suggest that coaching orientations are “things of the past” or are no longer present in physical education. There are still many recruits who do come to physical education with the aim of becoming coaches and the sport-centred philosophies to physical education content and pedagogy that tend to come with this mindset. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) One of the topics discussed in the ISHN group on Integration within Education Systems is understanding and working with teachers. Several articles in Issue #2, 2013 of The School-Community Journal discuss how teachers often have difficulty in communicating with and involving parents. The first article on first year teachers in New Zealand uses social exchange theory to note that lack of reciprocity, difficulties in building relationships, power-dependence and the social identity of teachers all create barriers. A US study comparing student teacher placements in urban and suburban environments affected teacher perceptions significantly. A third article describes the potential of use of inter-disciplinary teams in middle schools to engage parents. A fourth article examines how individual teacher attitudes and school-related factors will affect the parent-teacher/school relationship.A fifth article explores how adult education programs can teach parents about being ionvolved in schools and their child's education. A sixth article reports on a parent program offered by a housing agency. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in issue #4, 2013 of Pastoral Care in Education offers some insights on how teachers can collectively develop a negative view or perception of individual students when discussing them in teacher conferences/meetings. The researchers report that "Using positioning analysis, the transcriptions of 15 interviews with staff were analysed. The school staff’s reflections on the individual students covered three areas: health, social well-being and education. The results show the ways in which positions were shaped and illustrate a reflexive process that developed continually throughout the staff’s relationships with the students. The staff positioned the students and indicated attributions of the students; however, the attributions were predominately negative. With each position, the staff’s view of students as subjects or objects and their relationships to the students are described in terms of mutual or one-way dialogue. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Three articles in Issue #4, 2013 of Research Quarterly for Exercise & Sport discuss the effectiveness of physical education teachers. Collectively, they provide an analysis bridging the past, present and future. The first article describes the past in measuring PE teacher effectiveness and then goes onto to examine the issue using student performance and teacher observation models. The second article suggests that current trends in measuring PS teacher will result in teachers being accountable in "providing students with ample health-enhancing physical activity to help them become physically fit and to learn generalizable movement and behavioral skills designed to promote physical activity and fitness outside of class time". The third article postulates that the future policy environment that has teachers being held responsible for academic and economic outcomes rather than adjusting for social and economic realities. In this context, the PE teacher may end being judged on student learning and therefore, the content of PE curricula will become far more important. Read more>>
(From Prevention Plus Wellness) Helping children, adolescents and young adults understand how health risk behaviors and health enhancing behaviors influence each other is critical to them making effective decisions for enhancing their whole health. In particular, youth need to know how substance abuse and health promoting habits affect each other to either enhance or interfere with their physical and mental health, perceived self-image, and achieving important life goals. In the past, health behaviors were viewed as being largely independent of each other. We now know that it is more common for youth to experience a number of co-existing unhealthy behaviors rather than a single behavior problem. These co-occurring behaviors influence each other both directly, as well as indirectly through common underlying risk and protective factors such as self-image and self-regulation skills. Effective prevention programs should therefore help young people identify how multiple areas of their lives interconnect to influence their future health, well-being and happiness. Below we provide some tips for teachers and parents on how to communicate with youth to help them make the connection between substance abuse and healthy behaviors. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Advocates of health and social programs in schools who want to see initial teacher education programs modified would be well advised to read this article in Issue #4, 2013 of Action in Teacher Education. The "Process and Politics of the Redesign of an Undergraduate Middle-Grades Program" This article describes the guiding framework that led the process, the data collected, how that data was used to make decisions about learning experiences, the politics of the curriculum change, and the process that will be used to evaluate the program changes. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An examination of the data from the School Health Policies & Practices Survey from 2000 and 2010 showed that teacher development activities were correlated with increased collaboration of lead health teachers with relevant school staff. However, the analysis, reported in the September 2013 issue of the Journal of School Health noted that while increased in-service development on nutrition and physical activity resulted in greater cooperation with nutrition and other school staff, the amount of staff development time on HIV prevention and substance abuse prevention and subsequent collaboration with other school staff declined in the same time period. The implications of this study likely go beyond collaboration to other areas such as teaching on different subjects, working with parents and more. In other words, without sustained teacher development support on specific health issues, the activities on those health issues may decline, even if there is work being done on other health issues. Is the sustainability solution really m ore funding for all issues, or does our approach to teacher development need to be more generic, working with teachers on all health issues if only a finite resource is available? Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A blog post from Edutopia underlines the need to understand teacher belief systems when we try to integrate health & social programs more closely with their work. Robert Garmston (with co-author Arthur Costa) identifies six predominant ideologies that influence educators' decision making:
Elena Agular, the author of the Edutopi blog suggests that conflict among teachers can arise when these six beliefs collide. Now imagine the collisions when non-teachers, with different belief systems, seek to enter the school. Read More>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #2, 2013 of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Teacher Education reports on a survey of 1397 teachers in Australia, followed by interviews with 37 teachers. the authors report that one-half to two-thirds of teachers were knowledgeable and confident about selected components of mental health promotion. The authors report that "Independent judgments by staff about students’ mental health status concurred with students’ scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in about 75% of cases, indicating a good level of staff awareness about students’ mental health status. Exposure to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion initiative was associated with improvements in teachers’ efficacy, knowledge and pedagogy, with small to medium effect sizes. Qualitative analysis indicated that teachers’ subject-matter and pedagogical knowledge were heavily reliant on curriculum resources." Implications of these findings are discussed. Read more>>
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