REFLECTIONS ON THE IHEART PROGRAMME BY DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS: Self-confidence, Mental Wellbeing and Resilience

Abstract

To promote social justice and educational equity for all students, teachers are given a significant place in international policy and literature as essential agents of change. Training teachers for inclusive practices necessitates building their self-confidence to increase their understanding of how they may use their resources to support children and adolescents, as well as boost their self-confidence. Teachers’ resilience to overcome difficulties may also have a crucial role in increasing the effectiveness of inclusive practices. This is because, despite agreement about the benefits of inclusive education, the number of teachers leaving their jobs increases daily. The aim of the project, therefore, was to support student teachers to bring to light their innate resilience and mental wellbeing and increase their self-confidence while working in schools and early year’s settings using the Iheart Project of Plymouth University experience. The Iheart Project was designed as a 10-week course. Student teachers in the first and second years of study at Plymouth Institute of Education participated voluntarily in the programme. This research was conducted using mixed methods and is focused particularly on students specialising in teaching children with special educational needs. Data were initially collected by using existing standardised scales namely Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practice and Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing. Besides the scales, researcher diaries, feedback forms, Iheart website documents and interviews with key individuals involved in developing and participating in the programme were also used. Findings suggest that caution should be exercised when considering programmes designed from a particular ontological and pedagogical standpoint, but the interactive activities and some of the techniques used in the Iheart Project can nonetheless be useful to increase student teachers’ self-confidence and mental wellbeing in the school environment. It is anticipated that aspects of the training that student teachers received within the Iheart Project are likely to make a positive contribution to their professional lives as they develop effective inclusive practices in mainstream settings.