| Abstract/Results: | ABSTRACT:
Recent studies have shown that an increasing number of young people at school experience emotional and mental health problems, which affect a wide range of outcomes, including risk behaviors and academic performance. In this scenario teachers are expected, in addition to their academic teaching role, to actively participate in the promotion of students’ mental health. Due to such difficult work demands there is a high-risk level of teachers’ stress and burnout which, in turn, can negatively interfere with the quality of classroom interaction and, consequently, with students’ engagement and learning.
According to literature, teachers with better social and emotional competencies (SEC) are more effective in stress management, have higher levels of wellbeing, and are more capable of managing the classroom, responding to the emotional needs of their students and engage them in the learning process. Within this scope, mindfulness-based interventions can be beneficial in promoting teachers’ SEC, and the existing studies on mindfulness-based programs for teachers have revealed promising results such as significant improvements in teachers’ self-efficacy and wellbeing and also in skills to manage the classroom effectively and to establish supportive relationships with students. Additionally, some studies of the neuronal circuits that accompany
mindfulness practices point to changes in how the body and brain respond to stress. Despite these encouraging results, research in this domain is very recent and there are few methodologically robust studies on the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions for teachers.
This symposium presents some preliminary results of a research project entitled Effects of a mindfulness-based intervention for teachers: A study on teacher and student outcomes (Bial Foundation Grant 114/16). This project was designed to evaluate the proximal and distal effects of a mindfulness-based SEC program specifically developed for elementary school teachers, across a variety of teachers, classroom climate and students outcomes. The program, Programa Atentamente, was primarily experiential in nature and included mindfulness practices, group reflection, role-playing and homework assignments (formal and informal mindfulness practices). From a methodological stance the project followed a randomised trial design, used a mixed data collection strategy, and included four data collection points: pretest, posttest, and two follow-ups. Participants were recruited through the school training centers and randomly assigned to an intervention group and a control group.
In this symposium, three presentations are carried out on the preliminary results of this project, collected at pre-test and post-test. First, Sofia Oliveira and colleagues present teachers’ selfreport data on social and emotional competencies, burnout symptoms and wellbeing levels. Next, Maria Amorim and Ana Patrícia Pinheiro report on neurophysiological data regarding teachers’ attentional control. Finally, Carolina Gonçalves and colleagues present the observational ratings of teachers’ behavioral classroom interactions with students.
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Reference:
| Marques-Pinto, A. & Sampaio de Carvalho, J. (2018). Effects of a Mindfulness-based Intervention for Teachers: A Study on
Teacher and Classroom Interactions Outcomes. In K. Teoh, N. Saade, V. Dediu, J. Hassard, & L. Torres (Eds), Book of Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology ‘Adapting to rapid changes in today’s workplace’ (pp. 83-84). Nottingham, United Kingdom: EAOHP.
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