Good Health and Wellbeing: An Education Perspective - Children's mental health

This Blog post was written by Paige, a Primary Education student. This blog post will focus primarily on Children's mental health and the education of good wellbeing in pupils. Ultimately, showing the correlation between improving children's mental health and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 3 - Good Health and Wellbeing.   

As a nation the UK are becoming more aware and educated around the mental side of health and wellbeing. Looking at this subject from the Humanities and Social Science perspective and more specifically from an Education perspective, we can look at technology and some of its effects on the health and wellbeing of students and how teachers can intervene and manage its effects.

As technology is developing,  so too is it being used more and more within school and classroom environments. In 2020 we saw home schooling and the use of online learning being implemented across the UK within the national lockdowns. While the use of the internet can be an asset, there is also a negative side of children using the internet. Children are becoming more exposed to the risk of cyber bulling which can have detrimental effects to a child’s mental health (Kwan et al., 2020). The DQ Framework, which breaks down Digital Intelligence, looks at how we can practice digital safety, specifically looking at behavioural cyber-risk management, content cyber risk and commercial and community cyber risk (DQ Institute, 2021). It is important for children to identify and manage cyber risks like cyberbullying and stalking that can be found online. As a teacher it is important to teach children different kinds of behavioural risks and how they may encounter them.  

Its also important to teach children the ways in which they can be affected by the consequences of cyberbullying, for example looking at the mental side of cyberbullying and how it can make them feel. If more children are aware of the causes and consequences of another person’s mental health it may crucial in preventing cyberbullying.  As a teacher it is important to teach children ways of dealing and reporting cyberbullying and other behavioural cyber risks like online harassment and stalking. It is important for children to feel safe and comfortable to report and speak about cyber bullying and other online risks and be open to talking about how these online risks are affecting their mental health and wellbeing (Eden et al., 2012). As a teacher it is extremely important to be able to identify the changes in a child’s behaviour and give children a place to talk about their mental health.

 

 

 

References ;

DQ Framework | DQ Institute. Dqinstitute.org. (2021). Retrieved 6 April 2021, from https://www.dqinstitute.org/dq-framework/.

Eden, S., Heiman, T., & Olenik-Shemesh, D. (2012). Teachers’ perceptions, beliefs and concerns about cyberbullying. British Journal Of Educational Technology, 44(6), 1036-1052. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01363.x

Kwan, I., Dickson, K., Richardson, M., MacDowall, W., Burchett, H., & Stansfield, C. et al. (2020). Cyberbullying and Children and Young People's Mental Health: A Systematic Map of Systematic Reviews. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking, 23(2), 72-82. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0370