Make teachers clear mental-health hurdle – UTech

THE UNIVERSITY of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) on Tuesday advocated for the inclusion of a psychological evaluation for teachers as part of the fit-andproper requirements set out in the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) bill currently under review by a joint select committee of Parliament.

The university, a teacher-training institution, argued in its submission that the volatile environment in which teachers sometimes find themselves at schools requires that assessment for newcomers to the profession.

The suggestion came after UTech questioned the scope and limitation of the definition applied to the term ‘fit and proper’, noting that clarification was needed.

Professor Shermaine Barrett, UTech’s dean for the Faculty of Education and Liberal Studies, questioned whether fitness would be based on a technicist approach in which competency and skill set are the primary consideration, or whether consideration is given to other criteria such as “psychological evaluation, mental readiness, and medical fitness to teach”.

Schedule Four of the bill outlines several factors to be taken into consideration by the teaching council before granting a licence.

That high bar includes a review of criminal records, the council’s code of professional ethics and standard, prior denial of professional licence in another jurisdiction, suspension or revocation in another jurisdiction, and a medical report.

Committee member Kavan Gayle called for clarification on UTech’s position, questioning if the entity was calling for a psychometric evaluation test for all applicants before the issuance of a licence.

Barrett was insistent that competence transcended technical capacity to include all “dimensions of the readiness of a teacher to engage with students” psychologically.

“We believe in the Jamaican environment that this is absolutely critical as we look at increased violence in schools ... ,” the UTech dean said.

“We need to be able to assess competence in terms of our ability to engage with the students in the non-technical ways. How we engage our students in the psychosocial dimension.”

Committee Chair Fayval Williams, who is also education minister, questioned if UTech’s advocacy for the inclusion of psychological evaluation was reflective of how it trained its teachers.

Barrett answered in the affirmative.

“What we do is to engage with our student teachers around who they are, around what it is that makes them tick, and the psychosocial aspect of their development. We emphasise developing reflexivity,” she said.