Year
2024Credit points
10Campus offering
Prerequisites
Nil
Unit rationale, description and aim
Contemporary research into teachers’ wellbeing suggests that a collaborative, team-based, community approach appropriate to the individual’s holistic environment and specific needs offers preventative, protective, and supportive factors. Best practice in both teaching and in wellbeing provision requires practitioners to understand the need for, and develop and expand established relationships and social networks which support a team approach inclusive of themselves, their colleagues and their family.
This unit locates the individual in relation to their immediate family and school community, emphasizing how family roles can be played out in the learning environment. It explores how knowledge of these can be applied to build stronger collegial relationships through a whole school approach to strengthen teachers’ mental health and wellbeing. Students will be introduced to the PROSPER framework to attend to policy development and practice that makes teacher wellbeing visible. The inter-disciplinary approach drawing on psychology, sociology, family systems theory, history and social justice principles considers how values and ethics shape the way teachers negotiate their professional world.
The aim of this unit is to provide teachers with the knowledge, skills and understanding of the relationship between family dynamics, social-cultural factors, and the professional teacher, to build stronger collegial relationships and promote teacher wellbeing in terms of human dignity and the common good in their schools.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
| Learning Outcome Number | Learning Outcome Description | Relevant Graduate Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| LO1 | Articulate the complexity of teacher wellbeing in terms of whole-of-school context and its relationship to the teacher’s role and their practice (APST HA 6.2, Lead 7.2) | GC2 |
| LO2 | Identify and apply key socialcultural theoretical and philosophical perspectives (e.g., inclusion, social justice and the principles of Catholic Social Teaching) that underpin and shape contemporary understandings, development and practices of teacher mental health and well-being (APST Lead 7.1, 7.2, 7.4) | GC2 |
| LO3 | Describe and evaluate how a teacher’s relationship with their family and their professional community can build and support good mental health and wellbeing; and how collegial networks can support an individual during an adverse circumstance (APST HA 6.2, 6.3, 7.1; APST Lead 7.4) | GC1 |
| LO4 | Analyse cognitive, behavioural and social strategies for increasing teachers’ mental health and wellbeing and apply the PROSPER principles to the development of whole of school policy and practices (APST HA 6.3, Lead 7.2, 7.4) | GC1 |
AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS - HIGHLY ACCOMPLISHED
On successful completion of this unit, students should have gained evidence towards the following standards:
6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice Plan for professional learning by accessing and critiquing relevant research, engage in high-quality targeted opportunities to improve practice and offer quality placements for pre-service teachers where applicable. |
6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice Initiate and engage in professional discussions with colleagues in a range of forums to evaluate practice directed at improving professional knowledge and practice, and the educational outcomes of students. |
7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities Maintain high ethical standards and support colleagues to interpret codes of ethics and exercise sound judgement in all school and community contexts. |
AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS - LEAD
On successful completion of this unit, students should have gained evidence towards the following standards:
7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities Model exemplary ethical behaviour and exercise informed judgements in all professional dealings with students, colleagues and the community. |
7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements Initiate, develop and implement relevant policies and processes to support colleagues’ compliance with and understanding of existing and new legislative, administrative, organisational and professional responsibilities |
7.4 Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities Take a leadership role in professional and community networks and support the involvement of colleagues in external learning opportunities. |
Content
Topics will include:
- Multi-dimensional definitions, understandings and concepts of wellbeing
- Review social-cultural learning theories to examine the social-cultural contexts, attitudes and behaviours that marginalize individuals and communities experiencing mental ill-health. Explore family systems theory and family dysfunctionality to understand its impact on well-being in personal and professional relationships. Addressing the stigma and silence of not coping in terms of domestic violence, its support services and the role of family, colleagues and school policies
- Mental health and well-being: the plastic brain and the relationship with a self-care plan
- Reflective analysis on approaches suggested in scholarly material to build self-support skills, collegial support networks and compare such approaches with current behavioural and social approaches for personal wellbeing to determine potential personal growth
- Decision-making, planning and developing a self-care plan (with or without health care professionals) to manage and regulate mood, emotions and modifiable behaviours inclusive of sleep, screen time, nutrition, physical and social activity
- Analyse the impact of workplace bullying and develop overt and covert strategies that ameliorate bullying
- Explore a whole school approach to fostering teaching well-being including the prevention of bullying practices
- Address well-being through professional practice, code of conduct and professional boundaries
- Apply PROSPER Framework to make overt visible well-being.
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
The intended audience for this unit is teachers and school leaders who will benefit from a flexible offering of academic content. This unit respects teachers’ range of experience and seeks to respond in a manner that assists all participants to reflect upon and articulate an understanding of teacher wellbeing informed by their own teaching foundations, and the needs and circumstances of themselves, their school, their educational sector and their education colleagues.
The unit can be delivered in online mode, in an Intensive online or face-to-face unit. This capitalises on the maturity and capability of teaching staff and provides equitable access to a full provision of learning experiences within which a community of scholars can be developed. This unit will provide a holistic context for participants to frame their understanding of their school and community situations to assist in identifying how individual social-cultural factors contribute to teacher well-being.
A blend of lecture material and a variety of active learning strategies such as guided readings, annotated reflections, e-Module activities and peer collaborative tasks will be used. To strengthen peer collaboration online discussion forums are encouraged. In addition, links to electronic readings will be provided on the learning environment platform to extend students’ understanding of the lecture material. Further, the activities pose critical questions applicable for assessment, research and online discussion to build links between theories and concepts so participants can explore assessment task-related activities, either independently or collegially. The unit is structured as a progressive, inquiry-based developmental braid that supports participants’ learning through a sequence of learning stages so participants can apply and refine their knowledge and skills in the assessment tasks.
Learning strategies include reviews of resource material, self-paced writing activities, plus group and individual discussions. The aim is to provide a reflective and reflexive learning space for participants to consider and discuss the relevance of teachers’ well-being and teaching practice.
This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours.
Mode of delivery: This unit will be offered in one or more of modes of delivery described below, chosen with the aim of providing flexible delivery of academic content.
- On Campus: Most learning activities or classes are delivered at a scheduled time, on campus, to enable in-person interactions. Activities will appear in a student’s timetable.
- Intensive: In an intensive mode, students require face-to-face attendance on weekends or any block of time determined by the school. Students will have face-to-face interactions with lecturer(s) to further their achievement of the learning outcomes. This unit is structured with required upfront preparation before workshops. The online learning platforms used in this unit provide multiple forms of preparatory and practice opportunities for you students to prepare and revise.
- Multi-mode: Learning activities are delivered through a planned mix of online and in-person classes, which may include full-day sessions and/or placements, to enable interaction. Activities that require attendance will appear in a student’s timetable.
- Online unscheduled: Learning activities are accessible anytime, anywhere. These units are normally delivered fully online and will not appear in a student’s timetable.
- Online scheduled: All learning activities are held online, at scheduled times, and will require some attendance to enable online interaction. Activities will appear in a student’s timetable.
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment tasks are cumulative in their requirements, demonstrating how the complexities that surround teacher well-being are understood and acted upon, how and why collegial support networks can support and build well-being. The assessment strategy is designed to enable students to acquire specific, well-being knowledge to be applied to their school and professional teaching circumstance. There are two assessment tasks, each with two components to scaffold students research and writing.
Assessment Task 1 Part A is a critical reflection about the roles played by the individual teacher within their immediate context and the ways they negotiate agreements with their collegial and professional communities. Students are required to demonstrate how knowledge of relational roles, inclusive of professional relationships can support and strengthen their and colleagues’ wellbeing.
Assessment Task 1 Part B is an analysis of professional communities, and of how school and systems’ policies can support, build and strengthen teacher well-being. The aim is for participants to have a body of knowledge that can be accessed readily to be used by themselves and relayed to their colleagues. Part B requires the participants to identify and use school and education systems’ policies and assess scholarly literature that examines how professional networks build flourishing communities.
Assessment Task 2 Part A begins with a reflective account of the self as a teacher. It provides an initial learning opportunity embedding existing learning theory knowledge with declarative knowledge through reflection on the participant’s role and identity as a teacher and strategies to ameliorate bullying.
Assessment Task 2 Part B is an analysis of literature to develop an understanding of the inter-relationship of themselves as a teacher within the context of social and collegial networks. AT2 Part b requires the participants to select and assess both scholarly literature and contemporary, on-line-news sources that deal with the benefits of social and collegial networks and the impact on teachers’ mental health and well-being and then to develop material suitable for media content.
The two assessment tasks for this unit are designed to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome. To pass this unit, participants are required to submit both assessment tasks, achieve a passing grade in Assessment Task 2, and gain an overall Pass result, equivalent to 50% or more for the unit.
Overview of assessments
| Brief Description of Kind and Purpose of Assessment Tasks | Weighting | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|
Assessment Task 1: Writing Task Essay Part A: The Rationale: Using family relationship theories and related scholarly material, through the lens of reflective analysis, assess how individual and collective teacher well-being is influenced and shaped by relationship dynamics. Part B: Using the content of Part A and additional scholarly material, design a well-being, self-care plan for you or a colleague that demonstrates an analysis of the support offered by teachers’ professional communities and school policies. | 50% | LO1, LO2, LO3 |
Assessment Task 2: Part A: Using a range of literature, and the PROSPER framework, and in terms of the impact of bullying in the teachers’ workplace; critique your school’s or system’s teachers’ code of conduct and make suggestions for the policy to be adjusted so that it provides whole school approaches to enhance, foster and make visible teacher well-being. Part B: With 3-5 selected images create a professional learning power point presentation for your school staff that examines the impact of workplace bullying on teachers’ mental health and well-being, in terms of the PROSPER framework and framed by social-cultural learning theories. | 50% | LO2, LO3, LO4 |
Representative texts and references
Kitt, J.M. (2009). Facing Up to Workplace Bullying in the Context of Schools and Teaching. In M. de Souza, L.J. Francis, J. O’Higgins-Norman, D. Scott (Eds) International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Well-being. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9018-9_54
Noble, T., & McGrath, H. (2016). The Prosper Framework for Student Well-being. In: The PROSPER School Pathways for Student Well-being. Briefs in Well-being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21795-6_The Prosper Framework for Student Well-being | SpringerLink.
Noble, T., & McGrath, H. (2015), “PROSPER: A New Framework for Positive Education”, Psychology of Well-being. 5 (1). (PDF) PROSPER: A New Framework for Positive Education (researchgate.net)
NSW Government, “Bullying and Harassment”, Skills NSW, Bullying and harassment (nsw.gov.au)
See, S-M., Kidson, P., Marsh, H., & Dicke, T. (2022) The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Well-being Survey (IPPE Report). Sydney: Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University.
Santoro, D. A. (2018). Demoralized: Why teachers leave the profession they love and how they can stay. Harvard Education Press.
Victoria State Government, “Workplace Bullying”, Human Resources, Human resources: Workplace bullying (education.vic.gov.au)
Walters, L., (2017), “Visible Well-being in schools: The powerful role of instructional leadership”, Australian Council for Education Leaders, 39 (1).
Voelkel, R.H., & Chrispeels, J.H. (2017). Understanding the link between professional learning communities and teacher collective efficacy,” School effectiveness and School Improvement. 28 (4):505-526.
Waldram, J.B. (2004). Revenge of the Windigo: The construction of the mind and mental health of North American Aboriginal peoples. University of Toronto Press.
Wyn, J., Cahill, H., Holdsworth, R., Rowling, L., & Carson, S. (2000). MindMatters, a whole-school approach promoting mental health and wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. 34:594–601.