Assignemnt 1
Description
Word limit: 3,500–4,500 words (+/- 10%)
Weighting: 40%
Individual/team: Individual
Due date: 11.59pm NZT Sunday 13 April 2025
After you have read this information, go to the Assignment 1 Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.
Assignment overview
Assignment 1 is an opportunity for you to inquire into an area of interest in mental health, wellbeing and education.
This assignment supports course learning outcomes 1, 2 and 3.
Assignment details
Task
Choose from the following topics, or decide on your own area of inquiry (check with the course director about your topic if it differs from those listed). In each case, your inquiry should have links to children, youth and/or schools or other education settings (e.g. ECE, higher education, alternative education, community education):
1. Social media, young people and mental health
2. Gender, sexuality and mental health
3. Body image and mental health
4. Climate change and youth mental health
5. Interpersonal and communication skills in education
6. Drugs, alcohol and mental health and wellbeing
7. Colonisation and youth mental health
8. Youth perceptions and experiences of mental health
9. Help-seeking and mental health
10. School approaches to wellbeing
11. Health services in schools
12. Pedagogical approaches to mental health education
13. Curriculum policy in mental health and wellbeing
Instructions
Complete an essay that overviews a range of key research and arguments in the field. You must include at least 20 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Focus on the following aspects:
● Define your topic and focus clearly (set the boundaries of the inquiry).
● Include as much research from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia as you can in addition to research from other places.
● Include work that looks at Māori and Pacific research on your topic (and/or make links to Māori and Pacific concepts in this course).
● Structure your review with headings of the key themes and arguments.
● Include research that shows/argues different perspectives and findings.
● Include critical commentary about the topic that shows you are questioning the assumptions of the research (e.g. What perspectives do articles come from? What are the limitations of this research? Are conclusions moralistic? How is the research funded? etc )
● Include a substantive section that makes links to your own practice (or makes links throughout the essay).
● Write a conclusion at the end that summarises what you have learned from the summary and key findings that are worth noting, including implications for your own practice.
Please note: The reference list is not included in the word count.
Assignment Tips
It is helpful to have some questions to guide you. For example, do gender-diverse youth experience better or worse mental health and wellbeing? How do schools support mental health? What do young people want from mental health education programmes? Set 3–4 questions related to your topic to help guide your inquiry.
Note: It is likely that you will find a lot more research on your topic than you will be able to meaningfully discuss in this essay. So, you'll need to make choices. These criteria might help:
● include research that is most relevant to the topic and to your context (setting clear questions at the start will help with this)
● include dedicated discussion of research findings that are the most interesting or significant, and use citations (a citation in a bracket) to show other articles or chapters that you read but are not discussing explicitly
● include headings in your essay to structure it according to themes in the research (choose only 4-5 themes max) and leave out others