Teachers are increasingly expected to identify, respond to, and support student mental health and wellbeing. This expectation has intensified in the context of global concern about youth mental health and teacher shortages, yet teachers consistently report feeling underprepared, undersupported, and overwhelmed by these responsibilities. These pressures contribute to stress, burnout, and attrition, exacerbating the global teacher crisis and undermining efforts to create safe, inclusive, and thriving learning environments (OECD, 2020; UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2024).

Research on mental health and wellbeing in education, teacher wellbeing, and mental health literacy has expanded rapidly. However, existing studies typically focus on isolated elements such as knowledge, confidence, attitudes, or specific programmes, rather than on a coherent, theory-informed construct of teacher readiness to support student mental health and wellbeing. The term “readiness” is often used implicitly, rarely defined, and seldom anchored in robust psychological or implementation theories. This fragmentation limits the field’s capacity to accumulate knowledge, design coherent interventions, and inform policy and teacher education.

This PhD project addresses this gap by developing and testing a conceptual and measurement model of teacher readiness to support student mental health and wellbeing. The overarching aim is to articulate, operationalise, and empirically examine the key dimensions of readiness, and the relationships between teacher characteristics, contextual factors, and readiness-related outcomes.

The project is structured in three phases. Phase 1 employed a systematic–narrative hybrid review to map and synthesise interdisciplinary literature on teacher roles in student mental health, drawing from education, psychology, health, and implementation science. This review identified substantial conceptual diversity in how mental health, wellbeing, and related constructs are defined, and revealed that readiness is rarely treated as a multidimensional construct.

Phase 2 used a qualitative survey of 400 practising teachers across Australia to foreground teachers’ lived experiences, language, and perspectives. These data were used to refine and extend the initial conceptual model, clarify the ways in which attitudes, beliefs, and professional identity may mediate readiness, and ensure that the emerging model reflected classroom realities rather than idealised depictions of practice.

Phase 3, which is the primary focus of this presentation, involves the development and validation of a quantitative survey instrument designed to operationalise the conceptual model and test its structure. The instrument integrates established measures (e.g., mental health literacy, wellbeing literacy) with newly developed scales targeting readiness-specific domains that are not currently captured in the literature.

Across all phases, the project is informed by theoretical perspectives including the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1971) and organisational readiness frameworks, which provide lenses for understanding how motivation, capability, and contextual support interact to shape teacher readiness. The emerging model positions readiness as multidimensional, encompassing knowledge and skills, attitudes and beliefs, motivation and self-efficacy, interpersonal capabilities, structural and contextual enablers, emotional and personal wellbeing or capacity, professional identity, and teachers’ broader sense of self.

The presentation will outline the conceptual model, detail the survey development and validation process, and report emerging psychometric results. Additionally, methodological limitations and implications for further research will be discussed.

Utilising a mixed-methods sequential exploratory design (Creswell, 2018), this PhD project comprises three interconnected phases designed to build, refine, and test a conceptual and measurement model of teacher readiness. Phase 1: Systematic–narrative hybrid review A systematic–narrative hybrid review (Turnbull et al., 2023) was conducted to synthesise the international and interdisciplinary literature on teacher readiness to support student mental health and wellbeing. This approach was selected because the topic spans multiple disciplines and methods, requiring both systematic search procedures and narrative integration. Comprehensive searches were undertaken in PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and grey literature sources. The search yielded 3,144 records, of which 92 met inclusion criteria. Content analysis was used to extract and compare definitions, constructs, and theoretical underpinnings. Findings informed an initial conceptual model of teacher readiness, highlighting key dimensions and substantial conceptual inconsistencies across the field. Phase 2: Qualitative survey of practising teachers Building on Phase 1, a survey was administered to 400 practising teachers via online panel across Australian schools. Closed and open-ended questions asked respondents about factors that influence whether teachers in their school support the mental health of their students. Responses were analysed using inductive thematic analysis, supported by deductive coding based on the initial model. This phase confirmed the relevance of the core dimensions identified in the review and elucidated how they are experienced in practice. Phase 3: Survey development and psychometric testing Phase 3 (currently underway) involves constructing and validating a quantitative instrument to operationalise the readiness model. Survey development followed Churchill’s (1979) paradigm, adapted to the realities of a hybrid approach that integrates existing scales and newly developed items. For constructs with established measures (e.g., mental health literacy, wellbeing literacy), psychometrically robust scales were adopted. For readiness-specific domains without existing measures, new items were generated using a combined deductive–inductive process: deductively from theories and constructs identified in the review, and inductively from the language and themes emerging from teacher qualitative data. The instrument is being administered to a population-based sample of primary teachers across multiple Australian jurisdictions, with a target sample size sufficient to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses within a single dataset. Planned analyses include exploratory factor analysis for new scales, confirmatory factor analysis for the integrated measurement model, internal consistency and reliability, and assessments of validity. The final instrument will support structural equation modelling of hypothesised relationships between teacher characteristics, contextual factors, and readiness.

The project’s preliminary findings indicate that, although teachers’ roles in supporting student mental health and wellbeing are widely recognised, the construct of “teacher readiness” remains under-theorised and inconsistently defined. The findings from the systematic–narrative hybrid review suggested that teacher readiness can be conceptualised as a multidimensional construct encompassing: • knowledge and skills • attitudes and beliefs • motivation and self-efficacy • interpersonal capabilities • psychological wellbeing • professional identity • structural support Phase 2 findings point to attitudes, beliefs, and professional identity as critical mediating mechanisms through which structural supports and individual characteristics translate into perceived readiness. The expectation is that quantitative testing in Phase 3 will provide psychometrically sound evidence for this multidimensional structure and clarify the strength and direction of these relationships. Preliminary findings suggest that teacher readiness is best understood as a multidimensional construct that goes beyond individual knowledge or confidence to encompass teachers’ psychological wellbeing, professional identity, relational practices, and the organisational conditions in which they work. Upon completion, this project is expected to yield a theoretically grounded, empirically validated model and measurement tool that can inform teacher selection, initial teacher education, ongoing professional learning, and whole-school mental health policy. Understanding readiness may also inform the development of fair and informative assessment practices in teacher selection and early career support, focusing on readiness as a developmental, supportable construct rather than a fixed trait. By clarifying what it means for teachers to be “ready” and how readiness can be supported, the research has the potential to enhance teacher wellbeing, reduce burnout and attrition, and improve student mental health outcomes. This presentation will outline the conceptual model, detail the survey development and validation process (including the implications for methodological limitations), and report emerging psychometric results. Further, consideration for expanding this research into European contexts will be considered.

References Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T Churchill, G. A., Jr. (1979). A paradigm for developing better measures of marketing constructs. Journal of Marketing Research, 16(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/3150876 Creswell, J. W. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE Publications. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). How’s life? 2020. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/9870c393-en Turnbull, D., Chugh, R., & Luck, J. (2023). Systematic–narrative hybrid literature review: A strategy for integrating a concise methodology into a manuscript. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 7(1), 100381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100381 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. (2024). Global report on teachers: Addressing teacher shortages and transforming the profession. UNESCO. https://doi.org/10.54675/FIGU8035