Enhancing Professional Practice: an innovative professional development strategy to support teachers in school-based mental health promotion

Abstract

Increasingly schools are being challenged by research, government and community demands to become key sites for mental health promotion. Teachers play an important role in promoting the social and emotional health of students. This article describes an innovative professional development strategy in Victoria, Australia designed to support teachers to work skilfully and confidently in the area of mental health promotion. The Catholic Education Commission of Victoria (CECV), in partnership with the University of Melbourne, has sponsored over 500 teachers to undertake 2 years of study, in the Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Studies (Student Welfare), to resource them to take leading roles in mental health promotion in their schools. The article presents the preliminary results of a 3-year longitudinal study to gauge the impact of this professional development strategy on participants and their schools.