Extending the Impact of SAMA: Teacher’s Training for Youth Mental Health in India

Why do we need to extend this project?

Indian teacher training program do not typically include comprehensive knowledge about mental health or how to deliver positive classroom experiences rather than harsh practices or corporal punishment. While working on foundational SAMA project, we found teachers were eager to learn about teacher and adolescent mental health and wished this had been part of their teacher training. We want to maximize the impact of this learning by building new relationships and networks in Indian education and teacher training who could utilize our research findings and to foster new research and impact pathways. Integrating such training into the teacher training curriculum could facilitate a holistic understanding of young people’s mental health and use of positive approaches in teaching and interactions with students. Healthy student-teacher relationships, and schools which are psychologically safe, can protect young people’s mental health.

What are the aims of this project?

The proposed research builds on learning from Project SAMA. We aim to compare the current teacher training practices in colleges of Karnataka with teacher training module produced by SAMA, to include more comprehensive training techniques and content.  Hybrid stakeholder engagement event would be held to co-refine program for wider impact in teacher training colleges in Karnataka and Goa. This will include collaborative decisions about the content, implementation and evaluation of this new addition to their teacher training curricula.