Unit rationale, description and aim
Early career teachers experience overlays of different stressors as they learn about school culture, their role and identity as a teacher and of teaching practice. Research identifies links between teacher well-being and student academic achievement as well as identifying the stressors of competing priorities such as ensuring academic excellence, preparation for external tests, sociocultural inequity and access to digital technologies as well as attending to student well-being.
The unit focuses on using evidence-based, researched-informed practice to develop an understanding and a repertoire of skills to navigate the challenges of early career teaching stresses. Students will be challenged to consider how their attitudes and beliefs about mental health are formed and how an accumulation of stressors develop burnout. Pre-service teachers are encouraged to develop strategies to work collaboratively with their colleagues, students, local communities and other professionals to build whole-of-community networking to reduce and decrease potential stresses as well as improving teachers’ lifelong learning, outcomes and wellbeing. Through examining factors leading to burnout, students develop workload and time management strategies to decrease stressors to develop robust mental health.
The aim of the unit is to encourage pre-service teachers to become aware of potential stressors, the duty of care to self and students, and the teaching code of conduct. Further, the unit seeks to build a pragmatic mindset and offers strategies to manage and mitigate the impact of teaching stressors.
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.
Identify the most common school and classroom-base...
Learning Outcome 01
Describe the professional, collegial factors that ...
Learning Outcome 02
Research, reflect and analyse the experiences of e...
Learning Outcome 03
Content
Topics will include:
- Relationship between teachers’ mental health and student well-being and academic achievement.
- Attitudes and beliefs about mental health and how our attitudes are formed.
- Attitudes about difference, stigma and impact of attitudes on others.
- Identity and role formation as a teacher: The influence of societal beliefs and social media.
- Contemporary understanding of mental health including classifications of needs and non-categorical approaches.
- Philosophy and contemporary, consumer-led research underpinning mental health.
- Impact of classroom life and other stress factors in the first five years of teaching.
- Promotion, workload, burnout and impact on teachers’ mental health.
- Consideration of support services and strategies available to early-career teachers.
- Time management and communication strategies with children and families to reduce conflict.
- Teachers’ code of conduct and duty-of-care.
- Relevant legislation and policy including Human Rights, Anti-Discrimination, Disability Standards, Nationally Consistent Data collection, support strategies, legislation and policy to ameliorate burnout and support teachers’ mental health.
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment tasks and their weightings are designed to allow pre-service teachers to progressively demonstrate achievement against the course learning outcomes by demonstrating attainment of academic and professional standards and develop graduate attributes consistent with university assessment requirements. The three assessment tasks are designed to build and increase an understanding of work-place environments and work-place stress which can be relieved by collegial networks and the development of workload and time management strategies.
The first assessment task, a visual essay draws on the students’ pedagogical knowledge to identify and examine the most common impacts on teacher’s mental health. The second, group-based task requires collaboration with peers to research how and why collegial networks support teachers and their mental health during difficult teaching and work-place situations. The third utilises the knowledge and understanding acquired from AT1 and AT2 so students can construct a self-care plan that considers research-identified strategies that protect and strengthen mental health.
Minimum Achievement Standard
The assessment tasks for this unit are designed to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome. In order to pass this unit, students are required to complete all assessment tasks and gain an overall pass result.
Electronic Submission, Marking and Return
Electronic submission and marking of assignments through Turnitin.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Visual Essay With 5+ select...
Assessment Task 1: Visual Essay
With 5+ selected photos or images write an annotated photo essay that reflects knowledge of educational learning theories to explore your understanding of the key factors that impact the mental health of an early career teacher.
30%
Assessment Task 2: Group task Media Representatio...
Assessment Task 2: Group task Media Representation
Using a range of literature, construct media content that examines the benefits of developing and maintaining social and collegial networks for positive mental health and well-being.
30%
Assessment Task 3: Writing Task Care Plan with ...
Assessment Task 3: Writing Task
Care Plan with Rationale
Analyse current literature and develop a rationale for, and an action plan of holistic self-care appropriate for early career teachers in a post-pandemic world.
40%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
Learning and teaching strategies include lectures, tutorials, review of resource material provided and group discussion and individual self-paced activities.
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 in total across the semester. To achieve a passing standard in this unit, students will find it helpful to engage in the full range of learning activities and assessments utilised in this unit, as described in the learning and teaching strategy and the assessment strategy.
Technology Enhanced Learning
Lectures and tutorials will be offered in synchronous time, but will be recorded for students unable to attend the scheduled sessions. Students will be notified via Canvas when the lectures and tutorials will be held, their Zoom links and when the recordings will be uploaded. Additionally, the self-paced activities with links to digital resources will be available on the Learning Management System.