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..... 

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 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. 

(From the ISHN Member information service)  Most teachers enjoy their job, despite feeling unsupported and unrecognised in schools and undervalued by society at large, according to a new OECD survey. The OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) finds that more than nine out of ten teachers are satisfied with their jobs and nearly eight in ten would choose the teaching profession again. But fewer than one in three teachers believe teaching is a valued profession in society. Importantly, those countries where teachers feel valued tend to perform better in PISA. More than 100,000 teachers and school leaders at lower secondary level (for students aged 11-16) in 34 countries and economies took part in the OECD survey. It aims to help countries develop a high-quality teaching profession by better understanding who teachers are and how they work. 
Teachers Isolated: The survey shows that too many teachers still work in isolation. Over half report rarely or never team-teaching with colleagues and only one third observe their colleagues teach. Feedback is also rare, with some 46% of teachers reporting they never receive any from their school leader, and less than a third (31%) believe that a consistently underperforming colleague would be dismissed. But the survey shows that there is a lot teachers and school leaders can do about this: teachers who engage in collaborative learning have higher job satisfaction and confidence in their abilities. Participation in school decisions also boosts job satisfaction and makes teachers feel more valued in society.
Other key findings include:

• The average age is 43, with Singapore having the youngest teachers and Italy the oldest. More than nine in 10 (91%) have completed a university education and had teacher training (90%). A typical teacher has taught for around 16 years, usually full-time (82%) and on a permanent contract (83%).
  
• Around half of school leaders are male (51%), are around 50 years of age and have 21 years of teaching experience. They spend most (41%) of their time managing people and resources, planning and reporting
  
• The average class size is 24 students. Teachers spend an average of 19 hours per week teaching, ranging from 15 hours in Norway to 27 hours in Chile. But in about half of the countries, one in four teachers said they spend at least 30% of lesson time handling classroom disruptions and administrative tasks. Of an average total of 38 hours of work, seven hours per week are spent preparing lessons, five hours per week marking, and two hours per week on school management, working with parents and extracurricular activities.
  
• The survey challenges some stereotypical views of the profession. For example, job satisfaction rates are much more affected by classroom behaviour than class size. And most teachers find appraisals and feedback constructive: 62% of teachers, on average across countries, said that the feedback they receive in their school led to moderate or large improvements in their teaching practices.
  

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(From the ISHN Member information service) ISHN and ASCD have been sponsoring an international dialogue on how health 7 social programs can be integrated within education systems. One aspect of that suggests that H&S advocates should support a broad, liberal and student-centered approach to learning as outlined in the ASCD Whole Child approach. However, should we also be asking H&S advocates if they are actually doing that in their various instructional programs that seek to teach specific knowledge and skills about particular health or social topics? A recent blog underlines this question when it describes the difference between education and training (or education based on outdated factory models).  

The blog article, appearing in the Smart Blog on Education (Jun 9, 2014) suggests that " Our traditional approach to schools was based on a factory model where workers had to be “trained” to perform actions and repeat them in the same way and at the same time. Anything that distracted them from performing the way the factory prescribed was just a distraction to be extinguished as quickly as possible. A person’s natural interests, including the desire to socially connect to others, needed to be put aside in favor of the required work. Workers needed to be “trained” in a way of acting that was foreign to how they were naturally wired to learn. Since the work they did was arbitrary, relatively meaningless and tedious, they needed to be rewarded for performing in a certain way and penalized for performing in a different way." "In this factory model of schools, character and social/emotional skills are not integrated into the interactions between teachers and students. There is one main social skill: Do what you are told. Policymakers recognizing that schools are missing this social/character element decided to have character education and social emotional skill training inserted into the traditional structure of schools." "The environment and structure of a school sends a message to students that very often contradicts the content of many social emotional and character education programs. In addition, when the basic structure of schools does not change, neither do the attitudes of many teachers. It’s not surprising that many of them view these programs just as add-ons or distractions from teaching academic content. ".Instead of training students, schools should be educating them. Education comes from the Latin words e and ducere–meaning to lead out of. Education therefore is not about creating skills and abilities in people who are blank slates waiting to be shaped and molded. Education assumes that people come ready to learn with special abilities, capacities, interests and affinities, and need guidance and support from human relationships for their unique human qualities to come out." 

Based on this analysis, can we truly say that we are guiding students to learn about their health and social development based on their interests, needs and abilities, OR, are we designing instructional programs to teach specific, predetermined content to all students based on a factory style approach?  

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>>

Project-based learning, based on a constructivist approach to education, is highly recommended in  health-personal-social development (HPSD) education. So a recent post  from Edutopia which describes four free web tools for creating student portfolios and projects inline will be of interest. Kidblog is unique among the web tools featured here because it is built by teachers for teachers. Kidblog provides teachers with everything they need to help students create their digital portfolios safely. It gives teachers administrative control over student blogs and accounts and the settings which are set as private by default, can be opened up to enable parents to view their children's work. If your school is fueled by Google Apps for Education, then using Google Sites to create student portfolios, or "Googlios," makes perfect sense. With Sites, students can create media-rich websites to display their work throughout the school year. Evernote can serve as a viable option for creating student portfolios. Evernote is the Swiss Army knife of organization. In other words, it does just about everything. It allows students to write, take photos, record audio, upload content and more with the ability to tag items, create notebooks for organization and share content socially. Something else that makes Evernote so versatile is that it can sync across multiple computers and mobile devices. Three Ring is worthy of consideration as well. As with Evernote, students can create and upload content from their own devices and tag, search and share their portfolios. However, what Three Ring offers that Evernote doesn't is teacher-created class accounts.  Read more>>  (An item from the ISHN Member information service) 

MPs in England have launched an inquiry into the future of PSHE and sex and relationships education (SRE) in schools. The Education Select Committee has called for evidence to help with its investigation, which will tackle a range of issues including whether PSHE should be a statutory subject. The cross-party inquiry comes after an Ofsted subject report last year judged that PSHE was not good enough in 40 per cent of the 50 schools it visited – primary and secondary. The report – Not Yet Good Enough – also found that half of secondaries needed to improve its SRE, while many teachers lacked training to tackle sensitive or controversial issues in both PSHE and SRE. Inspectors expressed concern about a lack of “high-quality, age-appropriate SRE” in more than a third of schools which they said could leave children vulnerable to “inappropriate sexual behaviours and sexual exploitation”. 
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(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) A randomized controlled trial of the impact of a teacher classroom management program on the classroom behavior of children with and without behavior problems, reported in Issue #5, 2013 of Journal of School Psychology, indicates that such training can improve teacher practices and reduce behavior problems among students. The researchers report that " Six intervention and six control classrooms comprising 12 teachers and 107 children (aged 3 to 7 years) were recruited. Children were screened for high or low behavior problems using the cut-off points of the teacher-rated Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997). The primary outcome measure was independent classroom observations using the Teacher–Pupil Observation Tool (Martin et al., 2010). Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to examine the effect of the intervention on teacher, classroom, and child behavior. Results showed a significant reduction in classroom off-task behavior (d = 0.53), teacher negatives to target children (d = 0.36), target child negatives towards the teacher (d = 0.42), and target child off-task behavior (d = 0.48)."  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:

1. Religious Orthodoxy. This ideology aims to teach the habits and values that will lead to that religion's realization of how life ought to be lived in accordance with that faith. Educators driven by religious orthodoxy strive to help students learn appropriate norms and morality and to conduct their lives according to these norms.
2. Cognitive Process. Educators who are primarily aligned to this stance believe that the central role of schools is to help students learn to think, reason, and problem solve. Cognitive processors select instructional strategies that involve problem solving and inquiry.
3. Self-Actualization. Those who believe in self-actualization believe that the purpose of teaching is to bring out the unique qualities, potentials, and creativity in each child. They value student choice and self-directed learning, and are keen to provide for students' unique and multiple needs, interests, and developmental tasks.
4. Technologist. Technologists place strong emphasis on accountability, test scores, learning specific sub-skills and measurable learning. They might be "driven by data," and frequently use terms such as accountability, time on task, mastery, diagnosis and prescription. This is an ideology which as been adopted by many policy-making bodies in recent decades and is associated with external assessments, high stakes testing, and teacher performance.
5. Academic Rationalism. Academic rationalists believe that knowledgeable adults have the wisdom and experience to know what's best for students. They often deliver teacher-centered instruction, are drawn to the Classics, and use instructional strategies such as lectures, memorization, demonstration, and drill. They evaluate students through summative exams and content mastery.
6. Social Reconstructionism. Social Reconstructionists believe that the purpose of education is to help students become good citizens who can help take care of the world. They view learners as social beings who ought to be concerned with social, political, and environmental issues. They believe that education is an instrument of change and that schools are an institution charged with the responsibility of bringing about a better future and world. 

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 UCLA School Mental Health Project) After damning indictments in the 1970s and 1980s, classroom ability grouping and tracking practices fell into disrepute and declined. 1 Data over the last decade indicatea resurgence of grouping practices in classrooms. 2 Tracking in the form of assigning students to certain classes based on designated ability also dipped initially, but for the most part continues to produce differential course placements of students that are associated with inequities in post-secondary opportunities. At the outset, we want to be clear that academic tracking per se is inappropriate. Grouping and placing students in classes solely based on their test performance and grades has negative repercussions to the students and to the society. The potential negatives include reducing equity of opportunity at school and beyond, perpetuating inequities and disparities based on race and socio-economic status, fostering a climate of hopelessness and disengagement at school and in the community and contributing to mental health problems. That said, in the 21st century, discussions of classroom grouping practices must focus on the appropriate role for grouping in facilitating student learning. At the same time, attention must be given to the dilemma of minimizing potential negative effects. Our emphasis here is on (1) grouping as a fundamental feature of most efforts to teach in classrooms and (2) learning supports that directly address barriers to learning and teaching as essential in minimizing the dilemma of negative effects. Read More>>

(From ASCD) Discover how the learning environment, instruction, and teacher attributes combine to cultivate resilience. Although research indicates that resilient students most likely have personal characteristics like social competence and a sense of purpose, it is helpful to consider additional aspects that contribute to resilient students' achievement: the learning environment, instructional pedagogy, and teacher dispositions. Learning environments that foster resilience are academic, supportive, and promote opportunities for success (Schussler & Collins, 2006). Students not only perceive that they are welcome in class but also feel comfortable asking questions. For at-risk learners, especially, research suggests that students have a strong need to perceive that an environment is caring, respectful, and supportive. Fostering resilience requires instruction that is student-centered and engaging,Although educators tend to believe that struggling students have a preference for less complicated tasks, research indicates that they instead favor assignments that spark curiosity and encourage thinking. Teachers who contribute to resilient students' positive learning experiences express high expectations, are competent in their content areas, and challenge students to do their best. 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>>