Research Seminar: Enhancing school – university pre-service teacher professional experience with online wellbeing masterclasses during COVID-19

Over the past ten years, the topics of character, resilience, and wellbeing in education have drawn attention by school leaders, teachers and policymakers; however, there is a gap between the developments in schools and how initial teacher education at universities have responded.

This presentation reports on making a series of a pilot online well-being masterclasses created during the first wave of COVID-19 for second-year Bachelor of Teaching pre-service teachers at an Australian University during 2020. The Carpe Diem process was adopted for the development of the overall masterclasses. Experts were interviewed on character, resilience, and wellbeing education from the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Of the 153 students enrolled in the Bachelor of Teaching, 93 students (60%) voluntarily enrolled in the masterclasses. This presentation provides a practical explanation of the creation process employed to integrate these approaches within the offering for Bachelor of Teaching students to improve the overall experience for their professional practice and the development of a wellbeing framework.