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Response Ability: Teacher Education and Early Childhood

Response Ability: Education

Response Ability is an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. It is implemented by the Hunter Institute of Mental Health, in partnership with universities and educators throughout Australia.  

Response Ability supports the preparation of teachers and early childhood workers, by providing resources for use in their professional training. The aim of the program is to better prepare these professionals for their roles in mental health promotion, the prevention of mental illness, and early intervention.  

Roles of Teacher and Early Childhood Staff

Supporting the social and emotional development and wellbeing of children and young people has been associated with better mental health outcomes, improved behaviour and higher academic achievement. 

Teachers and early childhood staff can help all children and young people by creating safe and supporting learning environments and by promoting positive social and emotional development across all stages of childhood and adolescence.

Educators also have a role in identifying those children and young people who need further assessment or support and helping them to access other services - such as early intervention services, psychologists, family support agencies or school counsellors.

Teacher Education Resources

The Response Ability team provides free multi-media resources for use by lecturers and tutors in delivering teacher teacher education programs.  There are Response Ability components suitable for use in early childhood, primary, middle years and secondary teacher training.

The material uses a problem-based learning approach and consists of film scenarios with accompanying discussion questions or tutorial activities. There are also printed resources and web-based materials designed to support both educators and tertiary students.

The project team is guided by an Advisory Group made up of teacher educators from several tertiary institutions. The team has consulted  extensively with teacher educators throughout Australia and continues to add to the resource suite to suit the changing context of teacher education.

Project team members have also met with representatives from the educations departments, Catholic education offices, independent schools bodies, and teacher accreditation organisations across all states and territories. Response Ability works in partnership with the national school-based mental health programs: Kidsmatter and MindMatters. 

Children's Services Training Resources

The Response Ability team is currently completing the development of a multi-media resource designed to support the training of children's services staff through TAFE and other registered training organisations. This resource will also consist of films, information resources and student activities.

This work is being guided by a multi-disciplinary Advisory Group that includes tertiary educators and early childhood peak bodies.  The new Children's Services Training Resource is scheduled for completion in mid-2009 and dissemination will commence in the second half of the year.

Other Publications

The project team also produces Education Connect, an occasional papers series exploring social and emotional wellbeing in education that is distributed to universities throughout the country. 

Complementing this publication, Response Ability has a partnership with the University of South Australia to publish a peer-reviewed electronic journal known as the Journal of Student Wellbeing.

In addition, a range of journal articles, conference papers and fact sheets are available from the Response Ability web site. This site presents extensive information for universities, lecturers and tutors, and students of education.  

For Further Information:

Visit the Response Ability web site at www.responseability.org and go to the section on Education and Children's Services.  

To contact the project team, please e-mail education@hnehealth.nsw.gov.au

or telephone us on (02) 4924 6936.