Classroom teacher’s perspectives on social emotional wellbeing in the middle years

Classroom teacher’s perspectives on social emotional wellbeing
in the middle years

Social emotional well-being has become a focal point of government policies and standards requiring schools to provide a whole-school approaches to meet the diverse needs of students, yet there is a paucity of understanding around teacher’s preparedness to meet these standards. This study responds to a need to understand teacher’s preparedness to meet these expectations with a focus on the middle years of social emotional development and classroom practices. A phenomenological framework informed data generation using semi-structured interviews with three Australian middle years teachers which was followed with thematic analysis. Three major themes were inductively derived from the data. First, access to relevant school supported professional development is needed to ensure the ongoing rigour and teaching and understanding of approaches to effectively support student social emotional well-being. Second, a teacher’s efficacy to proactively teach and support student well-being depends on both their professional and life experience. Both need to be recognized and affirmed as valuable by teachers themselves and wider education systems. And, thirdly, the study affirms
the importance of relationships – student-teacher, parent teacher and collegial, as part of effective strategies to support the teaching of social emotional well-being. These findings lay the foundation for further studies to construct an understanding of whole school practices and teacher’s daily work in delivering social emotional well-being learning.