Evaluation of a compassionate mind training intervention with school teachers and support staff
Authors
Maratos, FrancesMontague, Jane
Ashra, Hajra
Welford, Mary
Wood, Wendy
Barnes, Christopher
Sheffield, David
Gilbert, Paul
Affiliation
University of DerbyIssue Date
2019-06-29
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Teacher retention is a key issue facing schools, with stress, student behavior, current competitive policies and practices resulting in many leaving within the first five years of qualification. Consequently, recent in-school research initiatives have focused on resilience training, although the quality of such conducted studies is debated. Drawn from Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), this study set out to explore a six module Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) programme with school staff to improve well-being. As part of their continued professional development, over 70 teachers and support staff took part in the CMT, with a mixed-measures AAB quantitative and qualitative design employed. This enabled us to explore both implementation effectiveness and outcome effectiveness in terms of parameters of well-being. The initiative was well-received with the majority of staff reporting positively on their experiences of the curriculum and practices. Additionally, exercise practice was associated with significant increases in self compassion (p<0.01) and significant decreases in self-criticism (p<0.05). Thematic analyses further revealed benefits of CMT for dealing with emotional difficulties. As a feasibility study, our results demonstrate many benefits of CMT in educational settings. CMT may hold promise as a way of helping those in education counteract the current competition-based nature of education, especially that which contributes to negative changes in well-being. Given this, future research should employ a control group design, a larger sample size and a range of wellbeing measures at follow-up, to fully evaluate the utility of CMT in educational settings.Citation
Maratos, F. A., Montague, J., Ashra, H., Welford, M., Wood, W., Barnes, C., Sheffield, D. & Gilbert, P. (2019) 'Evaluation of a compassionate mind training intervention with school teachers and support staff'. Mindfulness, pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.1007/s12671-019-01185-9.Publisher
Springer NatureJournal
MindfulnessDOI
10.1007/s12671-019-01185-9Additional Links
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12671-019-01185-9Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
18688527EISSN
18688535ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/s12671-019-01185-9