A Study On The Adaptation Of Teachers In Mental Health Education In Primary And Middle Schools

The topic in this research focused on the teachers’ adaptability of mental health education in primary and secondary schools. The purpose of the research was to understand the contents and problems in their induction adaptation process and systematically analyze the internal and external factors influencing the process. By telling the mental health education teachers’ story, this study tried to raise the concerns:the training institutions and inaugural schools should pay more attentions to this special groups, so that the staff training modes could be optimized and improved and the induction adaptation of mental health education teachers could be promoted. Besides, some valuable suggestions have been provided for the university students who will engage in mental health education of primary and secondary school in the future.In order to get the interpretive understanding to the problems of mental health education teachers in the induction adaptation process, the depth interview was chosen from the qualitative research in this study. Researcher applied the usual method called "Purpose sampling". And intensive sampling and extreme cases sampling were combined in the method. There were 6 mental health education novice teachers in primary and secondary schools chosen as the research objects. Each of them was interviewed in depth 3 times (about 60 minutes one time). With each interviewee’s permission, a tape-recording facility was used in every interview. After interviews, all tape-recorded sound was sorted out into scripts with 12 million words. Then, they were deeply processed, refined and summarized by open coding, constant comparison method and the method of category analysis and scenario analysis. All subjects had have read and signed the "informed consent". This entire research process strictly followed the ethical principles of qualitative research.According to the study, we found the conclusions as follows:(1) The induction adaptation of mental health education novice teachers includes four aspects:roles adaptation, teaching adaptation, interpersonal adaptation and environmental adaptation. In the aspect of roles adaptation, as for a single mental health education teacher role, teachers could adapt to it relatively good, but bad as for double (or multiple) roles, like "head teacher and mental teacher" or "mental teacher and subject teacher". In the aspect of teaching adaptation, the main difficulties are lacking of teaching skills, appropriate guidance and helps in other disciplines. However, teaching skills can be improved by practice of listening to lectures and having opening classes. In the aspect of interpersonal adaptation, mental health education teachers are basically satisfied with their interpersonal adaptation. Their relationships with other colleagues and students are pretty well. In the aspects of environmental adaptation, metal teachers who lives in the local enjoy a better adaptation.(2) There are many factors that impact the induction adaptation of mental health education teachers. In the aspect of college vocational education and training, teaching practice objects are different from and the actual ones; there are shortages of head teachers’work and consulting practice training. In the aspect of vocational school, firstly, school leaders do not pay attention to the mental health education,but focusing on student exam achievements, and they even do not arrange mental health classes and provide suitable teaching materials. Secondly, the number of mental health education teacher is small, and superior inspection files are too much, which causes excessive work load to metal teachers. Then, metal teachers are lack of interpersonal supports, teaching guides, and understanding and cooperation from other teachers. Finally, mental health teachers must take many unfamiliar classes, which doesn’t have prospects for development or opportunities of promotion are small, especially in private schools. In the aspect of teachers themselves, they could not clearly understand their own mental health teacher roles, and their own roles conflict with the head teacher role. Besides, the mental teachers’ differences in empathy and the gap between reality and imagination will also affect their induction adaptation.(3)In this study, researcher puts forward four suggestions to promote the induction adaptation of mental health education teachers. First, colleges should expand the range of teaching practice and use the policy of decentralized internships. They should also increase opportunities for students to professional practice, deepen teacher skills study, strengthen normal students’ skills training, allow normal students to elect courses, and further refine Normal Psychology. Second, school recruiting mental health education teachers should strengthen the psychological attention and humane care, create effective "apprenticeship" assistance measures, reduce excessive non-mental health professional works, provide fair re-education and development opportunities, implement the actual work of mental health education contents,increase the number of school mental health workers, establish "little discipline" teaching and research groups, so that teachers can learn from each other, and advocate other teachers’ supports to mental health education. Third, mental health education novice teachers should quickly and accurately locate their own teacher roles. They should firstly be "strict" to students, and then "lenient" to them. They should also learn to seek guidance and helps from other teachers. Fourth, psychology normal students should go to primary and secondary schools to participate in internships. They should also keep in touch with the seniors and make full use of network learning resources.