Supporting pre-service teachers’ holistic health during their final in-school teaching placement

We are aiming to support and assess pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) holistic health during their final in-school teaching placement. Researchers and Initial Teacher Education providers should recognise the importance of providing emotional, mental, and physical support to those pre-service teachers on placement to foster a healthier, more resilient teaching workforce. Our primary aim is to examine the feasibility of supporting pre-service teachers by exploring strategies and their effects to manage health-related concerns (physical activity/well-being, social support/networks) during placement. Essentially, we aim to help support/provide students with opportunities to be physically, socially and mentally healthy via zoom and physical activity sessions and understanding more about the practicality, management of said endeavours. Our secondary aim is to understand the effectiveness of/and changes from, strategies to support physical activity/well-being, social support/networks. There will be both physical and online support provided. The physical activity sessions will include physical activity (PA) such as walks on the beach, body weight exercise/researcher led fitness sessions, social sports i.e., beach volleyball, frisbee, tennis etc). The students attending University are located close to these facilities and participants will need to attend in person. A PDHPE lecturer will be supervising/providing the PA sessions. The mode of administration will be in small group ie whoever can attend the sessions. Intensity of the PA sessions will be determined by the participants capabilities and experience. The physical activity sessions will run for 8 weeks, once each week. Affective state questionnaires will be administered at each session and this will be cross referenced to monitor adherence. Fortnightly zoom mentoring sessions will be held via zoom as a collective cohort to build relationships, networks, and provide a means to talk about any challenges being experienced regarding teaching. Two sittings are being offered each fortnight though contain the same information/intent. NB:// The zoom slides/notes/resources will be made available to all consenting and non-consenting students not able to attend any of the (two offerings per fortnight) sessions. Two experienced teachers will be supervising/providing the sessions with 10+ years of experience. Zooms can be conducted anywhere they wish from participants, the researchers will be conducing these at the University of Newcastle. Regarding the mode of administration, e.g. groups any amount are welcome, at home, etc Session attendance to zoom will be via their recorded login attendance ie roll Session attendance will be via the affective state questionnaire completion(s) handed out and returned before and after each PA session. Total duration of the intervention will be over 8 weeks ie the final placement duration at the institute.