Abstract
The chapter examines the urgent need for pre-service teacher training programs to integrate content on mental health. In the current neo-liberal context, there is increasing pressure on universities to streamline and shorten these programs, when in fact there might be a need to add content to their existing structure. Developing pre-service teachers' awareness around student mental health is a pressing need but one campuses are usually reluctant to address when it may represent a widening of their scope. The chapter analyzes phenomenological data collected by the author around his lived experience of delivering a course on mental health within a Canadian pre-service teacher training program. It examines the complex, rich, and diverse outcomes that are achieved (1) on teacher candidates' approaches to inclusion, (2) on their ability to navigate their own mental health issues, and (3) more widely on their willingness to embrace social model approaches to disability. The chapter examines the repercussions of this reflection on the transformation of pre-service teacher programs.
TopIntroduction And Context
There has been a tendency over the last decade in Canada, within the current neo-liberal climate which prevails in higher education (HE) (Bamberger et al., 2019; Morgan, 2021), to shorten pre-service teacher training and to make these programs as palatable, hands-on, fast-paced, and cost-effective as possible (CBC, 2018; Teaching Certification, 2021). Institutions have been competing within each of these dimensions in order to maintain their share of what is increasingly a weakening and highly coveted market (Rust & Kim, 2012). This has meant that two ambivalent and contradictory pressures have emerged within these programs nationally. On the one hand, there is an increasing realization that early career teachers are ill prepared for the field and that attrition is rising (Goldhaber et al., 2021; Phillippo & Kelly, 2014; Vagi et al., 2019). The implication is that pre-service training should be enriched, both in terms of scope of experiences and in depth of knowledge (Krieg et al., 2020; Ronfeldt et al., 2021). On the other hand, marketing pressures are leading to the elimination of an increasing number of courses and topics for the sake of expediency (Gilroy, 2005; Mergler & Spooner-Lane, 2012). One such topic is mental health (MH). Stakeholders in the field are stressing the fact that specific and detailed training in relation to mental, social and emotional health is essential when preparing early career educators for the realities of classroom practice (Murano et al., 2019). Few programs, however, nationally have succeeded in integrating this training in their pre-service credentials format (Brown et al., 2019; Schwartz et al., 2017).
The chapter will discuss the experience of an Atlantic province campus in integrating, developing and prioritizing mental health training within a pre-service teacher qualification program. The author will more specifically explore and analyze phenomenological data related to his lived experience, as an instructor, in developing and teaching a course focusing on adolescent mental, social and emotional health within a BEd program. He has offered this course within this faculty of education, on five occasions, in both French and English over a period of five years.
The chapter will describe first the format the author adopted when offering these courses. The second part of the chapter will examine and analyze the impact of these courses on the development of pre-service teachers’ professional development and their awareness around mental health. The third part of the chapter will examine and explain the extent to which the delivery of these courses goes beyond raising awareness and offers trainee teachers the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences with mental health, and their own strategies to develop and maintain resiliency in this context. This section will also explore the degree to which these courses support and encourage the development of a post-modern lens on mental health – and disability more generally - among pre-service teachers; this in turn helps shift them from a medical model view of mental health to a social model of disability perspective. It is argued, in the chapter, that these learning opportunities contribute to the pre-service teachers’ wider ability to conceptualize effective approaches to inclusion in the classroom
Key Terms in this Chapter
Bio-Medical Lens on Mental Health: This lens is a deficit model approach which tends to see as the only cause of mental health issue bio-medical disorders. It prioritizes clinical evaluation and treatment with drugs. It leads to a culture of referral in schools, within which teachers may feel that they are not equipped to address mental health issues in the classroom, and must instead systematically rely on clinicians to create inclusive provisions.
Deficit Model: An approach to mental health which construes individuals with mental health issues as inherently missing essential characteristics, not fitting into mainstream expectations, and requiring ‘fixing’. Deficit model approaches to mental health are often described as bio-medical, and focus mostly on clinical treatment and medication.
Social Model of Disability: The social model of disability positions disability not as an inherent characteristic of individuals, but rather as a lack of fit or as a friction between individual embodiment and the design of experiences, spaces, or products. The social model of disability places back the burden on the designer of the environment, rather than focus on the individual’s exceptionality.
Post-Modern Approaches to Mental Health: A stance which seeks to dissect the way language and discourse perpetuate hegemonic views of mental health which lock the public in simplistic views which reinforce a sharp dichotomy between mental health and mental illness, instead of privileging a vision of mental health as a spectrum and a continuum.
Mental Health First Aid: A word commonly used to describe short, user-friendly, non-technical courses which seek to steer participants away from ready assumptions, and misconceptions about mental health. They are careful not to focus on clinical information, and instead encourage participants to develop attitudes, approaches and reflexes which increase awareness, facilitate and support the provision of services, and avoid stigma.