Academics Continue to Explore Teacher Wellbeing Around the World

Following successful presentations across Europe throughout 2019, Dr Emma Clarke and Aimee Quickfall of Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) took their well-being research to the Finnish Education Research Association conference in Joensuu, Finland.

The research project charts teacher training well-being experiences of teacher trainees in the UK, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands employing visual methodologies including photo elicitation, time line drawing and diagrams. The project team have had a lot of interest in the methods as well as the findings and are currently working with colleagues at Leeds Beckett University, The University of Manchester and King's College, London on supporting their well-being work.

This latest presentation capped off an exciting year for the project team, which has featured contributions from several of Emma and Aimee’s colleagues at BGU including Shaun Thompson, Hannah Wells, Sue Lambert and Dr Claire Thomson, as they have also disseminated findings at ECER in Hamburg, a BERA special interest group forum in London and the UCET conference in Stratford.

Following their trip to Finland Aimee commented:

“It has been a pleasure to return to the University of Eastern Finland and to share our findings from the project with the teacher educators from Helsinki, UEF, Turku and Oulu.”

Whilst Emma reflected on the UK and Finnish contexts:

“The Finnish teacher education system is very different to ours - training lasts for 5 years and teachers graduate with a master's qualification. However, it is interesting that there are many similarities in the experiences of our students and our Finnish colleagues have been very supportive and engaged in the research.”

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