This study investigates and describes the various opportunities and challenges the University of Central Florida( UCF) teacher education program (TEP) has in its attempt to infuse social and emotional wellbeing practices (Stress management ) for pre-service teachers (PST) as a part of the learning curriculum. The study examines the implementation of social and emotional well-being practices within the core educational cores. There is little information on the subject— the interest in the topic arises for the need for a more holistic approach to education in today's 21st-century classroom. The researcher believes that teaching is a very emotional labored profession that, over time, when unmanaged, can cause burnout and different symptoms of exhaustion. As such, studies have shown that new teachers leave the classroom within their first 3 to 5 years of teaching. One of the re-occurring findings that explain why new teachers leave is because of stress. A holistic approach is a comprehensive approach to education where the learner's emotional, social, and academic needs are address. This study examines how the UCF teacher preparation program facilitates their pre-service teachers to deal with this stress by looking at the extent to which social and emotional well-being competencies aligns within the curriculum.

This research project is located in the context of Aboriginal health and education, and in particular, emotional and social wellbeing, recognising the critical need for effective mental health services and resilient, well-trained workers in the field of mental health.Mental health is understood to include a broad spectrum of conditions with extreme and chronic mental illness at one end and resilience or wellbeing at the other – the socalled ‘soft end’ of the social health spectrum. While recognising that the lines of demarcation between one category and another are grey, my thesis addresses the problems at the latter end of the spectrum: problems of excessive pain; the grief and despair caused by dispossession, loss of place, family and identity; and the deep frustration, humiliation and anger that results in family violence and child sexual abuse, intergenerational substance abuse, neglect and poor physical health. It is my position that very many Aboriginal people who need to make changes in their lives in order to feel well and functional in the world are not suffering from a Western disease but from the transgenerational consequences of colonisation. In recognition of the notion that Aboriginal wellbeing is everybody’s business, this PhD research project represents my response to these consequences.While popular assumptions are made about the relevance of art to Aboriginal health and many Aboriginal people testify to the fact that their engagement with art (writing, drama, dance, music and visual art etc.) has brought about significant change in their lives, there is no available research in Australia that supports the development of an arts-based approach to learning/therapy/wellbeing that has, for reasons that are well understood, the potential to suit the needs of Aboriginal people.Addressing this gap in the research, I inquire into an experiential, arts-based, emotionfocused, narrative-orientated, constructivist approach to healing in the tradition of humanistic psychology, which emphasises the importance of an emancipatory, clientcentred processes that facilitates the development of awareness, creativity, clarity of expression and critical reflection. The position I take breaks with the traditions of the biomedical model and conforms to the now widely held view that psychology and counselling treatment programs for Aboriginal people must address the whole person, emotionally/spiritually, mentally and physically, responding to the individual in his/her sociopolitical and historical context. Expressive arts therapy, the multi-modal approach to healing explored in this thesis, lays claim to these intentions.In this project, I locate myself as the researcher/practitioner whose life-stance is expressive of the phenomenological principles of experiential learning and reflexivity. Accordingly, I have drawn on a number of closely related research methodologies all of which, I argue, are consistent with phenomenology and Indigenous, participatory research practices: critical action research, art-based research and phenomenological research methodology. These modes of inquiry are linked through principles that value subjective experience and allow for a diversity of ways of knowing. Embracing an expanded field of ways of knowing respectful of Indigenous epistemologies is at the core of the arts-based therapy program under investigation.Expressive arts therapy, in this research project, was delivered in two modes: one was a series of nine full-day group workshops conducted over an academic semester; the other was a series of ten intensive individual therapy sessions with three participants conducted over the period of a year. The participants or ‘co-researchers’ were drawn from the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples and the Education and Art departments at Southern Cross University. Three mature-age Aboriginal students who had engaged in the Masters of Indigenous Studies program emerged as the core participants who, having contributed to the development stage of the project, followed the program through the group workshops to the final interviews at the end of the series of individual sessions.This thesis is, in part, an illustrated narrative of the in-depth work the core participants did with me in both the context of the group and individually. It invites the active participation of the reader. Insights into the nature and impact of expressive arts therapy are offered through a focus on the lived experience of the three core participants, their reflections on the program and their observations of the changes they made in their lives. An important parameter that I set, determined that the ultimate voices of authority were to be those of the participants. I was not at liberty to look for meanings that went beyond their experience and understanding.I argue that the experiences of expressive arts therapy re-presented in this thesis demonstrate that expressive arts therapy is in principle consistent with current approaches to Aboriginal psychology and counselling currently recommended by Aboriginal professionals and spokespeople in the field of Aboriginal health. Furthermore this body of work demonstrates that expressive arts therapy is a culturally appropriate intervention grounded in a creative process that has the potential to facilitate healing and change in the lives of people suffering from the long-term consequences of damaging childhoods.It is my hope that this approach to healing will be further researched and developed and, with culturally appropriate terms of reference, adapted to a wide variety of existing community services – rightfully, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners working for the wellbeing of their own people.

This research project is located in the context of Aboriginal health and education, and in particular, emotional and social wellbeing, recognising the critical need for effective mental health services and resilient, well-trained workers in the field of mental health.Mental health is understood to include a broad spectrum of conditions with extreme and chronic mental illness at one end and resilience or wellbeing at the other – the socalled ‘soft end’ of the social health spectrum. While recognising that the lines of demarcation between one category and another are grey, my thesis addresses the problems at the latter end of the spectrum: problems of excessive pain; the grief and despair caused by dispossession, loss of place, family and identity; and the deep frustration, humiliation and anger that results in family violence and child sexual abuse, intergenerational substance abuse, neglect and poor physical health. It is my position that very many Aboriginal people who need to make changes in their lives in order to feel well and functional in the world are not suffering from a Western disease but from the transgenerational consequences of colonisation. In recognition of the notion that Aboriginal wellbeing is everybody’s business, this PhD research project represents my response to these consequences.While popular assumptions are made about the relevance of art to Aboriginal health and many Aboriginal people testify to the fact that their engagement with art (writing, drama, dance, music and visual art etc.) has brought about significant change in their lives, there is no available research in Australia that supports the development of an arts-based approach to learning/therapy/wellbeing that has, for reasons that are well understood, the potential to suit the needs of Aboriginal people.Addressing this gap in the research, I inquire into an experiential, arts-based, emotionfocused, narrative-orientated, constructivist approach to healing in the tradition of humanistic psychology, which emphasises the importance of an emancipatory, clientcentred processes that facilitates the development of awareness, creativity, clarity of expression and critical reflection. The position I take breaks with the traditions of the biomedical model and conforms to the now widely held view that psychology and counselling treatment programs for Aboriginal people must address the whole person, emotionally/spiritually, mentally and physically, responding to the individual in his/her sociopolitical and historical context. Expressive arts therapy, the multi-modal approach to healing explored in this thesis, lays claim to these intentions.In this project, I locate myself as the researcher/practitioner whose life-stance is expressive of the phenomenological principles of experiential learning and reflexivity. Accordingly, I have drawn on a number of closely related research methodologies all of which, I argue, are consistent with phenomenology and Indigenous, participatory research practices: critical action research, art-based research and phenomenological research methodology. These modes of inquiry are linked through principles that value subjective experience and allow for a diversity of ways of knowing. Embracing an expanded field of ways of knowing respectful of Indigenous epistemologies is at the core of the arts-based therapy program under investigation.Expressive arts therapy, in this research project, was delivered in two modes: one was a series of nine full-day group workshops conducted over an academic semester; the other was a series of ten intensive individual therapy sessions with three participants conducted over the period of a year. The participants or ‘co-researchers’ were drawn from the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples and the Education and Art departments at Southern Cross University. Three mature-age Aboriginal students who had engaged in the Masters of Indigenous Studies program emerged as the core participants who, having contributed to the development stage of the project, followed the program through the group workshops to the final interviews at the end of the series of individual sessions.This thesis is, in part, an illustrated narrative of the in-depth work the core participants did with me in both the context of the group and individually. It invites the active participation of the reader. Insights into the nature and impact of expressive arts therapy are offered through a focus on the lived experience of the three core participants, their reflections on the program and their observations of the changes they made in their lives. An important parameter that I set, determined that the ultimate voices of authority were to be those of the participants. I was not at liberty to look for meanings that went beyond their experience and understanding.I argue that the experiences of expressive arts therapy re-presented in this thesis demonstrate that expressive arts therapy is in principle consistent with current approaches to Aboriginal psychology and counselling currently recommended by Aboriginal professionals and spokespeople in the field of Aboriginal health. Furthermore this body of work demonstrates that expressive arts therapy is a culturally appropriate intervention grounded in a creative process that has the potential to facilitate healing and change in the lives of people suffering from the long-term consequences of damaging childhoods.It is my hope that this approach to healing will be further researched and developed and, with culturally appropriate terms of reference, adapted to a wide variety of existing community services – rightfully, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners working for the wellbeing of their own people.

This thesis reports on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the SEL policy makers’ conversations taking place in England and Wales during the New Labour period. The research sets out to offer a critical explanation of Welsh and English SEL policy thinking and doing and how the SEL policy discourse worked to privilege certain ideas and topics and speakers and exclude others. Thinking with theory and building on the work of Apple (2007) and Ball (2012) I draw on the contemporary tenets of critical theory to examine the (dominant) English and (often subjugated) Welsh discourse(s) to historically locate and contextualise the mainstream SEL literature within the ideological discourse of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005). This neoliberalism is one which unequivocally drives policy in the direction of markets and propounds a thorough marketization of educational provisions and practices (Lynch, 2006).Drawing on data from a series of eight semi structured interviews with key national level policymakers, alongside documentary analysis, I argue that New Labour in England, particularly in its second term, through a particular policy network and the SEAL programme, adopted SEL as a tool of managerialism designed to shape and govern a self-managing, entrepreneurial, placid subject in the service of the neoliberal economic model. Alternatively I contend that the Welsh assembly adopted SEL as a practical and progressive tool for developing a more equal society and a more egalitarian and democratic modus operandi of social justice (rooted in normative precepts of the collective and of community cohesion). This “Welsh” approach was powerfully intertwined with the devolution programme and notions of the child as a democratic citizen with agency and rights. In both England and Wales this understanding and application of SEL was intimately connected with national identity and notions of nationhood. This work was undertaken using a CDA approach. It employed Fairclough’s Three Dimensional Model (1992) of Critical Discourse Analysis and engaged with the subject and data through the three lenses of text (the written and spoken word), discursive practice (the production, distribution and consumption of the text) and social practice (the wider social, political and economic forces shaping the discourse). By illuminating through CDA the ideologically infused discursive claims to truth and value, which underpinned the rhetoric and substance of the UK (Anglo-centric) Government’s version of SEL in schools and that of the devolved Welsh Government, my findings reveal the broader scale ideas and political-ontological truth claims which drove the development of SEL across England and Wales during the New Labour period; the research therein unveils the implicit but reified notions of childhood and children’s wellbeing which were central to SEL development at both the national and devolved levels; it identifies the unspoken and latent ideological projects which were core to the production of divergent SEL discourses in each of the countries; and finally, it reveals the influence which national tradition, domestic power structures, cross-societal inequities and the subjugation of certain identities have had on the conceptualisation and practical delivery of SEL in England and Wales. The study concludes that the relationship between language and political ideology in England and Wales during the New Labour years powerfully shaped the SEL policy discourse. In England the result of this was a thin version of SEL co-opted into the service of the neoliberal marketplace. In Wales a similar outcome occurred but only after a very different contextualised and transformative version of SEL was relinquished due to the invasive neoliberal forces attacking Welsh education.

Over the past decades socio-emotional programmes have been implemented in schools worldwide. Depression in Swedish Adolescents (DISA) and Social and Emotional Training (SET) are two socio-emotional programmes being practised in Swedish schools. The aim of the present dissertation is to explore students’ perspectives on DISA and SET, as well as the programmes’ intentions and strategies. The empirical material consists of interviews with students taking part in DISA and SET, participant observations conducted in an elementary school practising SET, participant observations of DISA and SET instructor courses, and a broad range of textual material concerning the programmes. Article I reports on an inherent contradiction in DISA, where techniques designed as treatment are practised as universal prevention for girls as a group. The girls’ accounts of DISA demonstrate why this contradiction is problematic – it was not up to the girls as course participants to define what problems they were having, but the problems were instead defined for them by the course. Taking part in DISA and SET involves exercises in which the students are expected to selfdisclose in front of their classmates. Article II reports on how this task of self-disclosure had a potential for strengthening students’ peer relations, while it at the same time entailed a risk of triggering already on-going destructive interactions, such as bullying and harassment. Article III demonstrates that the potential of self-disclosure is not equally distributed across the students, but depends on their social status within their peer group. Article III also shows that the norm conveyed by the SET programme – that showing anger is an inappropriate behaviour –functioned locally as a way to justify exclusion and negative positioning of peers who showed anger in response to ill treatment. Article IV provides an in-depth analysis of exchanges in a SET lesson concerning how students should deal with exposure to the negative actions of peers. It demonstrates how the types of questions a teacher is instructed to pose to maintain a neutral attitude in practice involve using more implicit forms of authority to construct ideals concerning desirable behaviours. These ideals were formed by discussing fictive examples, which meant stripping students’ actions of meaning and detaching them from the social and cultural context to which they belong. The present dissertation concludes by giving recommendations for policy practice. / Sedan millenniumskiftet har socio-emotionella program kommit att bli allt vanligare i skolor runtom i världen. Depression in Swedish Adolescents (DISA) och Social och Emotionell Träning (SET) utgör två socio-emotionella program som används i svenska skolan. Syftet med denna avhandling är att studera elevers perspektiv på DISA och SET, samt att studera programmens målsättning och design. Analysmaterialet består av intervjuer, deltagande observationer, programmanualer och dokument som beskriver och förklarar programmens utgångspunkter. Avhandlingen innefattar fyra artiklar. Artikel I belyser en konflikt i DISA programmet. DISA programmet lär ut tekniker som har utformats för att behandla depression. Programmet riktas dock till flickor generellt med syftet att förebygga att de utvecklar depression. Flickornas beskrivningar av DISA visar varför denna konflikt i programmet är problematisk. De fick inte själva definiera vilka problem de upplevde, istället var de tvungna att jobba med de problem som programmets övningar tillskrev dem. Övningarna som ingår i DISA och SET innebär moment där eleverna förväntas öppna sig inför varandra. Artikel II och III belyser hur detta fenomen hade potential att stärka elevernas sociala relationer, samtidigt som det också riskerade att leda till mobbning. I SET programmet tränas elever på att kontrollera sin ilska. Artikel III belyser hur normen – att visa ilska är ett olämpligt beteende – användes av eleverna för att rättfärdiga uteslutning av elever som visade ilska. Artikel IV består av en djupanalys av lektionen ’Vad kan du göra’ som handlar om hur elever bör agera om de utsätts för negativa handlingar från kamrater. Artikeln tar utgångspunkt i det dilemma som lärare ställs inför i SET programmet: att å ena sidan träna barnen i att anta socialt accepterade beteenden, och å andra  sidan följa programmets krav på neutralitet. Analysen visar att de frågor som SET lärare använder för att åstadkomma en neutral hållning i praktiken medför mer implicita former av styrning där programmets ideal om önskvärda beteenden reproduceras.  Önskvärda beteenden konstrueras genom att diskutera fiktiva fall utan att relatera dem till den sociala och kulturella kontext där barnen agerar och hanterar aktuella problem. Avhandlingen avslutas med en diskussion om hur ’barns psykiska hälsa’ och ’barns behov’ förstås och bemöts genom dessa program och vilka slutsatser som kan dras för utformandet av framtida insatser i skolan.