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Objective: Teachers face high levels of occupational stress, which can influence their mental well-being and contribute to teacher burnout. Healthy levels of exercise, a good diet and adequate sleep can reduce stress and improve mental well-being outcomes. This study explores the characteristics and effectiveness of lifestyle interventions on teachers’ mental well-being, including burnout; discusses directions for future programmes; and aims to identify the nature of evidence and gaps in the research field. Methods: A scoping review was conducted in May 2020 via ERIC, Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, Education Source, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus and Scopus databases. The search included relevant peer-reviewed articles on physical activity, nutrition and sleep interventions reporting teachers’ mental well-being outcomes. A quality assessment tool was used to appraise the quality and risk of bias of the included studies. Results: Sixteen intervention studies met the inclusion criteria. All studies incorporated physical activity into the intervention; however, only four included aspects of nutrition or sleep. No studies reported only nutrition or sleep interventions alone. The heterogeneity of interventions and their reported outcomes makes comparisons difficult. In general, the quality of the included studies was low due to small sample sizes, poor study design and incomplete reporting of information. Conclusion: Preliminary evidence suggests lifestyle interventions can improve mental well-being outcomes for teachers; however good-quality research is needed to improve the evidence base. Future interventions should have stronger research designs and larger sample sizes and use established measurements for assessing outcomes.

Objective: The ability of schools, school leaders and teachers to promote critical health literacy in teaching and learning is central to the development of health literacy in schools. However, research focusing on teachers and planning for health literacy through health programmes in school is minimal. This paper describes how one school Health and Physical Education (HPE) department planned for and implemented health literacy learning across Years 7–10 as part of the first-year delivery of the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education in New South Wales, Australia. Design: Single setting case study. Setting: A Years 7–10 Catholic school for boys. The HPE department comprised five teachers and one head of department. Method: Thirty-four lessons and 61 learning activities were analysed using Nutbeam’s health literacy hierarchy and the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education outcomes and content. Results: A large number of learning activities were categorised as interactive ( n = 37, 60.7%) and a smaller number of learning activities categorised as critical ( n = 16, 26.2%). The number of learning activities categorised as functional was the smallest ( n = 5, 8.1%). Conclusion: Findings suggest that school-based health programmes that lack a connection to a whole school approach may fail to provide opportunities for students to achieve the critical understandings of health literacy that will provide them with the capability to enhance the health of others.

Professional development (PD) provides an opportunity to promote the psychological, social, and physical health tools teachers require to maintain teacher wellbeing. Despite their potential, little is known about PD programs targeting the health and wellbeing of Australian teachers. This study aimed to summarize the characteristics of Australian PD programs targeted at teacher wellbeing, identify gaps in existing PD and make recommendations for future research and practice. Three search strategies, (1) search engine results, (2) a manual search of known Australian education websites, and (3) requests for information from Australian education organizations, were combined to ensure a comprehensive inventory of PD programs was compiled. This study found 63 PD programs promoting health and wellbeing that currently exist for Australian teachers. Of these, only three provided evidence of their evaluation indicating programs are advertised and implemented without evidence of their effectiveness. Future PD should be evaluated with findings of the evaluations reported publicly so evidence-based programs promoting teacher’s health and wellbeing can be recommended and implemented.

Background:The development of adolescent health literacy through school-based programmes is attracting international interest. However, there exist competing definitions, models and understandings of how these programmes should be conceptualised, implemented and evaluated. Australian Curriculum documents such as those relating to health and physical education currently focus on health literacy both in terms of learning outcomes and subject matter.Objective:This paper presents an evidence-informed framework for planning, implementing and evaluating health literacy school-based programmes and determining whether current Australian school-based health literacy programmes meet these guidelines.Methods:A systematic review was undertaken of PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ERIC, ScienceDirect and the A+ Education databases. We included articles that had been published online or in print between 2010 and February 2017. We set limits on the earliest publication date to ensure we included those programmes designed to al...