Did that Professional Education about Mental Health Promotion Make Any Difference? Early Childhood Educators' Reflections upon Changes in Their Knowledge and Practices

This item is under embargo for a period of 12 months from the date of publication, in accordance with the publisher's policy.Educators are at the heart of educational reforms, such as the introduction of mental health promotion initiatives into early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Good quality implementation of reforms requires educators to engage in high quality professional learning: If educators have not had opportunities to gain appropriate knowledge and expertise, new initiatives may be poorly implemented and may consequently achieve limited outcomes. This article reports ECEC educators’ perspectives about the impact on their knowledge and practices of the professional education component of the KidsMatter mental health promotion initiative. Educators from 111 ECEC services across Australia contributed a range of types of data, including questionnaires about their knowledge and self-efficacy, feedback about each professional education session, and photo stories about their changed professional practices. Participants indicated that their professional learning led to changed practices in areas such as interpreting children's behaviours, interacting with children, approaching parents, and collaborating with colleagues. Participants’ photo stories illustrate how professional education that focuses on content, active learning, coherence, and collaboration can positively influence knowledge and practices. However, if such gains are to last beyond relatively highly resourced start-up phases of initiatives, professional education needs to integrate with, and draw from, the ongoing availability of other professionals such as guidance and counselling staff, who have complementary knowledge and expertise; be recognised and embedded as a core component of ECEC educators’ roles and their workplace practices; and be culturally and contextually situated. Staff accounts of the impact of their professional learning on their practices can highlight to policy-makers the practical outcomes of strong investments in professional education. Awareness by other professions of the affordances and constraints faced by ECEC educators may contribute to interdisciplinary synergies among the range of professions involved in mental health promotion in educational setting

Sustainable professional learning for early childhood educators: Lessons from an Australia-wide mental health promotion initiative

Author Version made available in accordance with the Publisher's PolicyNew policy initiatives, such as those concerned with promoting young children’s positive mental health, highlight the need for good quality professional education in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. However, although a wealth of literature exists from the school sector, little is known about professional education in ECEC settings. This paper presents an analysis of ECEC educators’ perspectives about their professional learning during an initiative to promote young children’s mental health in 111 ECEC centres in Australia. Questionnaires and feedback forms were collected from educators on four occasions over two years. In addition, program facilitators rated the quality of implementation of the initiative in each centre. Thematic analysis indicated that the professional education was instrumental in building ECEC educators’ knowledge about children’s social-emotional learning and mental health, increased educators’ self-efficacy for mental health promotion, and encouraged a more collegial and collaborative workplace. Hierarchical linear modelling supported the learning gains identified in the qualitative analysis, but showed that the effect sizes for positive change depended on the quality of program implementation. The findings highlight important synergies between opportunities for professional learning and workplaces that are conducive to transformation and renewal. Recommendations from participants for improvement included the need to ensure the relevance of content to local contexts, more extended learning opportunities, translation of unfamiliar language, and more accessible timetabling of professional learning sessions. Issues concerning the need to advocate for, and sustain, professional education in ECEC settings are discussed

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Student Concerns in the Teaching Practicum

There is general consensus in the literature that students consider the practicum to be a highly valued component of their teacher education degree. Nevertheless, there are wide ranging concerns reported by students related to their teaching practice. This paper reports on these concerns in the form of a cross-cultural comparison of an Australian and a Singaporean sample of students. Singaporean and Australian students completing their first practicum independently responded to a questionnaire based on the Survey of Practicum Stresses (D'Rozario & Wong, 1996). The psychometric properties of their 7-factor model were tested using the Australian data. This resulted in a 4-factor model, which was confirmed using structural equation procedures. Details of effective but under-employed analysis techniques are presented. This model was employed subsequently to provide cross-cultural comparisons of student concerns in the teaching practicum. Significant differences between the stresses experienced by Singaporean and Australian students point to the need to understand student stress within a cultural context

Extending teacher education students' mental models of teaching and learning through Problem Based Learning

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.This paper reports student teachers’ reflections on changes in their mental models of teaching and learning following their experiences of a problem based learning (PBL) topic. Students develop robust mental models of teaching and learning during their school years. Mental models inform intentions and plans, which in turn inform actions. As such, teachers often teach as they were taught—possibly perpetuating practices that limit intellectual inquiry in classrooms. PBL was introduced to our Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) to challenge and extend students’ mental models about teaching and learning, with a view to influencing their prospective teaching actions. We created an analytical framework and identified key-word descriptors of change to guide categorisation of 105 students’ focussed written reflections on their PBL experiences. Results provide evidence that students do report changed mental models in areas such as, 1) the value of case studies for engaging with subject content, motivating learning and connecting theory with practice, 2) self-reflection and peer collaboration for cognitive and professional growth, and 3) PBL processes of inquiry for developing self-regulated learning practices

What happens in my university classes that helps me to learn?': Teacher Education Students' Instructional Metacognitive Knowledge

Teacher education students’ instructional metacognitive knowledge needs to be well developed to promote both their own learning and their prospective students’ learning. In this study, we asked teacher education students to provide answers to the question “What happens in my university classes that helps me to learn?” Students identified issues such as supportive classroom environments, teachers’ professional and personal qualities, practical activities, reflection, and discussions. Cognitive organisation strategies were not well represented. Cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling of students’ responses identified a perceptual separation between teachers’ and students’ roles, suggesting that participants’ sense of personal agency, shared responsibility for learning, and involvement in a learning community, were not developed in directions suggested by contemporary educational theory. Implications for teaching-learning interactions that have the potential to develop students’ instructional metacognitive knowledge are discussed

Teacher Education Students' Knowledge About how Class Discussions Help Them to Learn

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.Self-regulatory perspectives of learning imply that students need to possess knowledge about 1) themselves as learners, 2) how to build effective knowledge structures, and 3) how to further develop and apply their knowledge. In a teacher education context we would hope that students would be able to explicitly articulate such knowledge, not only in relation to themselves as learners, but also as potential teachers of other learners. This paper describes one part of a study that sought to investigate pre-service teachers' knowledge about learning. We asked final year Bachelor of Education students to provide a short written answer to the question, "What happens in your university classes that helps you to learn." The students' most frequent response was, "Discussions." We then conducted follow up interviews where students elaborated upon their written responses. We created a framework for analysing students' responses based upon principles of classroom climate, motivation, self-regulation and psychological- and social-constructivism. We draw conclusions about 1) the value of discussions as a teaching and learning technique, 2) the quality of participants' knowledge about how discussions help them to learn, and 3) the implications of participants' knowledge about discussions for their future roles as teachers

Life at school in Australia and Japan: the impact of stress and support on bullying and adaptation to school

In this international, comparative study, path analysis was used to examine eight different aspects of Japanese and Australian students' experiences of school life in relation to their effect on adaptation to school. Adaptation was constructed to include information on enjoyment of school, feelings of belonging to school, and relationships with other students. Two separate path models were tested to compare questionnaire data from over 3000 Australian and 6000 Japanese students across Years 5-10. The questionnaire was developed collaboratively by the authors to examine issues of common concern in both countries. Issues that related to the impact on adaptation to school of stress and support: family teachers, peers and school work, as well as bullying were of particular interest. Lack of support and the influential effect of stress were found to exert direct negative effects on adaptation to school, especially for high school students in Japan and Australia. The path results also confirmed the stressful effects of bullying in both countries. The finding of a strong relationship between bullying others and being victimised is discussed in the paper. Finally, the differences and similarities between Japanese and Australian students' perceptions of school life are extrapolated

"If you are just sick you could make your own chicken soup". But if it's a mental illness "you can't fix yourself". Teaching secondary school students about mental illness.

Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.This paper reports a classroom based investigation into the MindMatters curriculum resource “Understanding Mental Illness” (UMI). We observed the teaching of the UMI module in three secondary classrooms. We measured students’ knowledge, attitudes and behavioural intentions in relation to mental illness before and after teaching of the UMI module. We also held focussed discussions with teachers about teaching the UMI module and teaching about mental illness and mental health in general. Paired sample t-tests on students’ knowledge, attitudes and behavioural intentions, showed statistically significant improvements in students’ scores from pre-teaching to post teaching. Students’ in-class comments also indicated their increasing awareness of issues related to mental illness. Discussions with teachers raised pedagogical issues such as, finding ways to teach about profound issues such as mental illness in non-trivial ways; accommodating differing levels of development of students’ conceptual understandings; and the value of stories for changing people’s knowledge and attitudes. Teachers highlighted a lack of teacher expertise about mental illness and the implications this has for integrating modules such as UMI across the curriculum. Teachers also indicated a need for frameworks of scope and sequence to guide teaching about UMI in particular, and mental health in general

Quality Assurance for KidsMatter Primary: a scoping paper

This Scoping Paper reviews and details options for the ongoing quality assurance of KidsMatter PrimaryThis scoping paper was commissioned and funded by beyondblue, the national depression initiative. The Flinders team wishes to thank and acknowledge beyondblue for their ongoing support throughout the development of this report

What teacher education students learn about collaboration from problem-based learning

Group work, an essential component of learning and teaching in problem-based learning (PBL), is compromised if students’ experiences of PBL are colored by dissatisfaction with the process or outcomes. For the potential benefits of PBL to be realized PBL group work must be genuinely collaborative to address students’ personal and professional learning needs. Australian teacher education students (n=122) provided written reflections on PBL that enabled representations of their group work experience to be mapped using an Attitude, Skills, and Knowledge (ASK) framework to gauge understanding of the collaborative learning process (as learners and as future teachers). Attitudes identified as necessary for collaborative learning were valuing others’ perspectives, interdependence, and learning about self. The Skills dimension characterized interpersonal, problem solving and group skills. Features of the Knowledge dimension were: generation, application, and dissemination of knowledge. Pedagogical knowledge was also evident through learning connections made by students to their future teaching practice