Promoting Mentally Healthy Classrooms: Evaluation of Online Mental Health Literacy Instruction in Pre-Service Teacher Education

To better understand how to prepare large numbers of pre-service teachers for their role in creating and leading mentally healthy classrooms, this program evaluation explores outcomes related to an online mental health literacy course at a large central Canadian university. The course was delivered to 275 teacher education students simultaneously over 10-weeks and 20-hours of online instruction and professional reflection. Results indicated significant improvement in self-reported levels of mental health literacy, stigma toward mental illness, and self-efficacy for teaching students with diverse challenges. Qualitative reviews of participant feedback identified the most valuable aspects of the course and the ways in which it could be improved. A further qualitative analysis of participants’ descriptions of experiences related to teaching self-efficacy provided participant-driven insights into the way in which meaningful growth is facilitated for teacher educations students. Collectively, these findings were distilled into five participant driven kernels of effective practice that represent significant contributors to program effectiveness: professional role clarity; expectation setting; understanding the role of mental health, stress, and resiliency for all; easily accessible evidence-based knowledge and resources; and opportunities for critical discourse, performance, and feedback. Overall, results suggest that the course positively influenced the development of teacher education students’ belief in their capacity to contribute meaningfully to school mental health. This is early evidence that enriched online mental health literacy courses offer an efficient and effective way for faculties of education to promote to future teachers’ capacity to create and lead mentally healthy school communities