Supporting Student’s Mental Health: The Teacher’s Role
Open Access
Author:
Kimball, Sara
Area of Honors:
Secondary Education
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Fran Arbaugh, Thesis Supervisor Fran Arbaugh, Thesis Honors Advisor Andrea Vujan Mccloskey, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
Education Mental Health
Abstract:
In this paper, I discuss the problem of lack of teacher training and required coursework for pre-service teachers on mental health. In my literature review, I share the current offerings of teacher and pre-service teacher mental health training and note the lack of such research. To help combat the problem of lack of mental health training for educators, I designed an original one-credit course called EDUC 197: Supporting Students’ Mental Health and taught it to nine Penn State students. While teaching the course, I collected data in a DBR model. After teaching the course, I reflected on the experience. I was able to develop several findings by analyzing my data. My findings were that many future teachers have a limited knowledge on mental health. I also found that students have an interest in mental health education, but do not have many options to receive it. And lastly, there is a large need for emphasis on virtual education and how to support students’ mental health in an online setting.
