Training youth at risk mentors in Paths, an innovative TE program: promoting resilience, mental wellbeing and meaningful learning through a self-determined learning environment

Abstract

This article shows how the self-determined learning environment in Paths, an innovative teacher-education (TE) program, enables students to experience meaningful learning which reinforces their mental wellbeing and resilience. According to the self-determination theory (SDT), a central goal of such a learning environment is to support students' three basic emotional and social needs of self-capacity, autonomy, and relatedness and connections with others. While the Paths program trains the students to be high-school teachers, and coaches them to be mentors for youth at risk (YAR), about half of these students define themselves as having been YAR who suffered from a low level of resilience and mental wellbeing in their adolescence. Using the self-determined learning environment, Paths fosters students as self-determined learners in many courses which use methods like Project-Based Learning (PBL), Self-Determined Learning (Heutagogy), Outdoor Training (ODT), and Self-Management Learning (SML). In kee** with the qualitative multiple-case study method, semi-structured interviews with four Paths graduates and examples of other graduates' learning presentations demonstrated that graduates’ learning experiences supported their emotional and social needs and strengthened their feelings of resilience and mental wellbeing during and after the learning. The graduates testified that this learning environment helped them to become entrepreneurs and empowering educators, as well as social and environmental activists. These findings reveal the productive contribution of the self-determined learning environment to students' development as teachers and YAR mentors, and as social and environmental leaders.