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Full-Text Articles in Education

Different Measures, Different Informants, Same Outcomes? Investigating Multiple Perspectives Of Primary School Students' Mental Health., Katherine Dix, Helen Askell-Williams, Michael Lawson Oct 2008

Different Measures, Different Informants, Same Outcomes? Investigating Multiple Perspectives Of Primary School Students' Mental Health., Katherine Dix, Helen Askell-Williams, Michael Lawson

Dr Katherine Dix

Student wellbeing is of central concern for parents and teachers and for state and national governments. Policies on wellbeing are now articulated within all educational systems in Australia. Effective enactment of policy depends in part on the suitability of judgements made about students' mental health. This paper investigates teacher and parent/caregiver assessments of students' mental health based upon data from the evaluation of the KidsMatter mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention pilot Initiative in 100 primary schools across Australia. Goodman's Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was completed by parents/caregivers and teachers of almost 4900 primary school students in KidsMatter …


Early Challenges In Evaluating The Kidsmatter National Mental Health Promotion Initiative In Australian Primary Schools, Helen Askell-Williams, Alan Russell, Katherine Dix, Phillip Slee, Barbara Spears, Michael Lawson, Laurence Owens, Kelvin Gregory Dec 2007

Early Challenges In Evaluating The Kidsmatter National Mental Health Promotion Initiative In Australian Primary Schools, Helen Askell-Williams, Alan Russell, Katherine Dix, Phillip Slee, Barbara Spears, Michael Lawson, Laurence Owens, Kelvin Gregory

Dr Katherine Dix

This article describes, analyses, and reflects upon the challenges of planning and conducting the evaluation of the KidsMatter Initiative (KMI) in Australian primary schools during the first year of the two-year initiative. The purpose of the evaluation is to inform the Australia-wide rollout of the KMI. The discussion is arranged under four headings: (a) conceptual challenges, (b) design challenges, (c) practical implementation challenges, and (d) managing collaborative complexity. Emphasis is placed on how the challenges were theorised as a basis for resp onding to the requirements of the evaluation. Conclusions include recognising and enabling contributions from diverse stakeholders; utilising the …