Helen Askell-Williams

Teaching and Learning about Mental Illnesses: An Australian Perspective

We observed teaching and learning using the MindMatters teaching resource Understanding Mental Illnesses in three Year 10/11 (age range 14–17 years) classes in South Australia. We held focused discussions with the class teachers and a teacher reference group, and administered a questionnaire to measure changes in the students’ knowledge, social distance attitudes and behavioural intentions. Paired sample t-tests showed statistically significant improvements in students’ scores from pre-teaching to post-teaching. Teachers highlighted pedagogical concerns, such as making a complex issue like mental illness accessible to diverse students at different phases of social, emotional and cognitive development, and designing teaching materials that do not trivialise such profound subject matter. Teachers stressed the imperative for teaching about mental illness, but called attention to 1) the need to reach all students, 2) fitting mental health promotion into the timetable of an already crowded curriculum and 3) identifying frameworks of scope and sequence across the years of the secondary school curricula.

Quality of implementation of a school mental health initiative and changes over time in students’ social and emotional competencies

This paper reports the theoretical conceptualisation, statistical development, and application of an Implementation Index to evaluate the quality of implementation of the KidsMatter Primary school mental health initiative in Australia. Questionnaires were received from the parents and teachers of almost 5000 students, and also from KidsMatter project officers. A conceptual framework of fidelity, dosage, and delivery guided the selection of questionnaire items to create the Implementation Index, which was refined using Latent Class Analysis. Schools’ scores on the Index were classified into high, average, and low implementation categories. Profiles of high- and low-implementing schools provided insights into the characteristics of successful and less successful implementation. Next, hierarchical linear modelling showed that childrens social and emotional competencies significantly improved over time in average- and high-implementing schools, but not in low-implementing schools. The Implementation Index can inform areas for attention in health promotion initiatives and can provide a framework for future evaluations.

Teachers’ knowledge and confidence for promoting positive mental health in primary school communities

This paper reports an investigation into Australian primary school teachers’ knowledge and confidence for mental health promotion. Questionnaires were delivered to 1397 teachers. In-depth interviews were held with 37 teachers. Quantitative results showed that half to two thirds of teachers felt efficacious and knowledgeable about selected components of mental health promotion. 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 the findings for the implementation of school-based mental health promotion initiatives are discussed.

Early Challenges in Evaluating the KidsMatter National Mental Health Promotion Initiative in Australian Primary Schools

This article describes, analyses and reflects on the challenges of planning and conducting the evaluation of the KidsMatter Initiative (KMI) in Australian primary schools during the first year of the two-year initiative. The purpose of the evaluation is to inform the Australia-wide rollout of the KMI. The discussion is arranged under four headings: conceptual challenges, design challenges, practical implementation challenges and managing collaborative complexity. Emphasis is placed on how the challenges were theorised as a basis for responding to the requirements of the evaluation. Conclusions include recognising and enabling contributions from diverse stakeholders, using the domain expertise of the evaluation team, operating flexibly to meet the needs and exigencies of the KMI, the clients and the diverse participant groups, maintaining focus on the core conceptual frameworks underlying the KMI and the evaluation, and the implications of the evaluation for developing wider knowledge relating to schools and their effects, as well as about factors contributing to educational change.

Relationships between students’ mental health and their perspectives of life at school

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore relationships between students’ self-reported mental health and their perspectives about life at school in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia. Design/methodology/approach – The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and a purpose designed Living and Learning at School Questionnaire (LLSQ) were administered to 1,715 early adolescents in school Years 7-9. Correspondence analysis, which is a perceptual mapping technique available in SPSS, was used to examine relationships between students’ SDQ subscale scores (Emotional Symptoms, Hyperactivity, Conduct Problems, Pro-social Skills) and the LLSQ subscale scores (Motivation, Learning Strategies, Coping with Schoolwork, Bullying, Numbers of Friends, Safety at School and Teacher Intervention in Bullying Events). Findings – The correspondence analysis produced a two-dimensional visual display (a perceptual map) showing that students’ abnormal, borderline and normal SDQ subscale scores were closely relat...

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

New 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 sector. However, although a wealth of literature exists from the school sector, little is known about professional education in early childhood education and care settings. This article presents an analysis of early childhood education and care educators’ perspectives about their professional learning during an initiative to promote young children’s mental health in 111 early childhood education and care centres in Australia. Questionnaires and feedback forms were collected from educators on four occasions over 2 years. In addition, programme facilitators rated the quality of implementation of the initiative in each centre. Thematic analysis indicated that the professional education was instrumental in building early childhood education and care 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 programme 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 early childhood education and care settings are discussed.

Students with Self-identified Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (si-SEND): Flourishing or Languishing!

Students’ wellbeing is an essential component of their ability to function well, not only at school but also in all life domains. Many studies have investigated student wellbeing. However, empirical studies about the wellbeing of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are scarce. Furthermore, many studies have adopted a deficit view of wellbeing and mental [ill]-health. This study adopted a more positive perspective. We administered a questionnaire assessing social-emotional and psychological wellbeing, global self-concept, resilience, bullying, mental ill-health and school satisfaction to 1930 students, aged 13–15 years, who were attending seven mainstream schools in South Australia. Of those students, 172 self-identified as having SEND. Results showed significant differences, with students who self-identified with SEND not faring as well as other students on all measures. In particular, just over one third (39.9%) of students who self-identified as having SEND reported that they were flourishing, compared with just over half (57.6%) of the students who did not indicate that they had special needs. The findings indicate that more attention needs to be given to designing and implementing supports to improve the wellbeing and school satisfaction of students who self-identify as having SEND.

Concerns About the Quality and Quantity of Students’ Knowledge About Learning

In any instance of learning, a student uses both knowledge related to the topic being studied and knowledge about learning. Our observations of students’ knowledge about learning show that it is often quite limited and poorly developed. Many students struggle to develop a detailed description of what happens when they learn. It is disconcerting that students are in this state when there is now available a body of detailed research-based knowledge about learning that has been shown to benefit student achievement. We consider the possibility that this situation is associated with an inappropriate reliance on the belief that appropriate knowledge about learning will be generated through experience. This view underestimates the complexity of the domain of knowledge about learning, complexity that necessitates sustained teaching, and practice that parallels that provided for other knowledge domains.

Framing the features of good quality knowledge for teachers and students

In this paper we have two concerns. First we consider the features used to describe good quality learning actions and knowledge representations. Our second concern is the need to develop students’ knowledge of how to act, during teachinglearning transactions, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations. There is a convergence of views, at a broad level, about the character of good quality knowledge. Although there are frequent specifications of the features of good quality learning these discussions mostly do not build on one another so that a coherent representation of such learning is built up. There is therefore a need to consider further the characteristics of learning that are regarded as being of good quality. For this purpose we set out a framework based around six dimensions of good quality knowledge, namely, extent, well-foundedness, structure, complexity, generativity, and variety of representational format. In the final section of the chapter we advance arguments that point to the need to attend to the state of students’ and teachers’ knowledge about how to act, in strategic cognitive and metacognitive ways, in order to generate good quality knowledge representations. Lawson & Askell-Williams 14/08/2015 3

Involvement in Bullying During High School: A Survival Analysis Approach

Knowledge about the risks of bullying involvement during any year of high school is an important element of interventions for changing the likelihood of being bullied. Three cohorts of Australian students (n = 1,382) were tracked from 7th grade to 11th grade. The study showed that some students continue their involvement in bullying, while in addition, new bullies and new victims emerge during each high school year. The findings indicated that the risk of bullying involvement ranged from 16% (as a bully) to 36% (as a victim), increasing to 54.5% and 56.3%, respectively, if a student was a bully or a victim in 7th grade. The risk to students of becoming victims, bullies, or bully–victims in each year of high school suggests that bullying prevention initiatives should be designed to suit students at different stages of adolescent development.