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Using Personal Development Activities to Enhance Ecuadorian Student-Teachers’ Wellbeing

Abstract:

The Action Research report describes the carrying out of an exploration of student wellbeing combined with an intervention of personal development activities that were employed to enhance the mental and emotional wellbeing of 27 student teachers at an Ecuadorian teacher training university. While there are many studies exploring the factors that contribute to heightened levels of stress and anxiety among university students, looking for a better understanding of life in the classroom and improving it through introducing self-help methods is scarce. The findings of the report corroborate other accounts that wellbeing is an issue for tertiary level students in many contexts, and their challenges in the Global South are often multiplied. The researchers used pre- and post-intervention survey questionnaires as well as end-of-intervention and delayed student feedback to gauge changes in the participants’ wellbeing. The findings show that the students’ wellbeing has improved as a result of the personal development activities employed by the teacher researcher. The authors conclude that student wellbeing needs to be an institutional priority but individual teachers using a range of innovative and engaging activities can potentially achieve transformative and lasting effect when they treat their students as active practitioners of learning.