Should we expect teachers to get mental health certifications?

Teachers in K-12 schools are on the front lines when engaging with students who are struggling with mental health issues. Stressors such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and other mental health problems are likely to result in a student’s deficient performance thus making it more difficult for a teacher to help that student reach their academic goals. Many education experts say that preservice and in-service teachers need to be trained or credentialed to address student mental health issues and that coursework leading to certification in this area should be incorporated into teacher preparation programs. Proponents of credentialing maintain that this will better enable teachers to support students' mental health and, in so doing, provide educators with the satisfaction of knowing they are helping young people not only with their learning needs, but with their emotional needs as well.

However, with teachers leaving the profession in significant numbers because they feel they are already overworked and stretched thin, there are those in the education community who counter that it is unfair to ask educators to take on the additional role of assessing the mental health needs of their students. They contend that helping a student cope with a mental health crisis should be left to the expertise of other professionals who have extensive experience in this field such as psychologists or social workers. Both sides of this debate have directed attention to the adequacy of existing mental health teacher certification standards. Researchers are discovering that many of the standards in place are vague and fall far short in specifying what types of skills and knowledge educators need to effectively address the mental health challenges faced by their students. This article looks at the deficiencies of some of these standards.

Federal standards focus on academic achievement but do not emphasize student mental health

Federal education policies that have been established since passage and enactment of the “No Child Left Behind” reform bill link teacher effectiveness to a student’s achievement and content knowledge attained in primary subject areas such as mathematics, English, and science. National education standards in the US (United States), however, do not call for teacher training or certification in mental health despite existing research that shows a positive correlation between mental health and academic performance in students. Instead, the development of standards pertaining to a teacher’s ability to address mental health issues in students takes place under the authority of state boards of education and localities. This has given rise to gaps and ambiguities contained in a patchwork of standards on what mental health professional competencies should be expected of teachers in schools.

Mason researchers find inadequacies in existing mental health certification standards for educators

Faculty from George Mason University’s School of Education teamed with researchers from Loyola University Chicago, Arizona State University, and Western University to examine mental health competency standards for teacher certification across all fifty states in the US and ten provinces in Canada. In their study which was published in 2018, the researchers found that existing certification standards were limited in number and that most contained generic references regarding the importance of student mental health and lacked specificity on exactly what mental health skills or knowledge teachers needed to acquire. For example, as described by the study authors, the standards in the Canadian province of Alberta stress the importance of a teacher’s ability to analyze a student’s “mental and emotional states and conditions” that could impact teaching and learning. Similarly, the Minnesota Department of Education requires early childhood education teachers to understand “the development of mental health” while the Tennessee Department of Education mandates that K-6 teachers demonstrate a “broad, general understanding” of “positive emotional, social, and mental health practices.” The study authors state, “These references make clear the importance of mental health. They do not, however, lay out a clear path of action for teacher education programs or instructors.”

In other findings, the study showed that existing teacher certification standards emphasize how teachers should respond to certain psychosocial stressors specifically identified. The most frequently identified specific psychosocial stressors referenced in US teaching standards include abuse, neglect, and violence (24 states), drug and alcohol use (20 states), and crisis or trauma (10 states). However, guidance on mental health intervention appears less frequently with only seven states requiring teachers to learn how to conduct strategic or targeted interventions with their students. Finally, the study authors found that teachers in certain specialties were more likely to be required to meet mental health-related standards compared with general education teachers. Among these, researchers found that early childhood, health education, family and consumer science, gifted, and special education teachers in the US have unique mental health certification standards that differ from those applicable to general education teachers.

Teacher preparation programs need to decide whether to include mental health-related coursework into their programs

As implied at the outset of this article, not everyone agrees that certification for mental health competencies should be a requirement for all teachers. However, one thing is clear—the limited number of existing teacher certification standards for mental health in the US and Canada fail to provide adequate teacher guidance on how to address student mental health issues. Researchers say that absent such guidance, teacher education programs and their faculty will be “on their own” in determining how to incorporate mental health-related coursework that leads to the credentialing of teachers in this area.

To learn more about mental health-related certification standards for teachers, read this article by faculty from the Elementary Education program at George Mason University’s School of Education. Graduates of Mason’s Elementary Education program are well versed in research-based pedagogical practices and are ready to advance the twenty-first century classroom. For information about our degree offerings, please visit the program website.