Promoting Teachers' Social and Emotional Competence: The Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) Program

Introduction:

Successful implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum de­pends upon the teacher’s ability to serve as a positive role model, facilitate interpersonal problem solving, and create environments that are conducive to social and emotional learning. The emotionally demand­ing events teachers typically face often involve interac­tions with children who are not well-regulated due to exposure to numerous risk factors and who are in greatest need of a supportive relationship with their teacher to develop their social and emotional competencies.

There has been growing interest in applying mindfulness-based approaches to reducing stress and promoting teachers’ social and emotional skills. “Mindfulness” has been defined as present centered, non-judgmental awareness. Research on the effects of mindfulness training with adults has shown numerous positive effects including reduced stress, increased self-awareness, empathy and emotion regulation. The Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) program involves the integration of mindful awareness practices with emotion skills techniques.

Methods:

We report on a study that examined program efficacy among a sample of 51 elementary school teachers randomly assigned to CARE or waitlist control condition. The CARE program was delivered to the treatment group over the course of five full days spread out over 4 months. Participants completed a battery of self-report measures at pre- and post-intervention to assess the impact of the CARE program on wellbeing, efficacy, burnout/time pressure, and mindfulness. ANCOVAs were computed between the CARE group and control group for each outcome, and the pre-test scores served as a covariate.

Results:

Compared to teachers assigned to the control group, CARE participants were significantly less anxious, reported better emotion regulation and fewer gastrointestinal symptoms. They also reported a reduced sense of time urgency and increases in two dimensions of mindfulness (observe and non-react). There were trends towards improvements in positive affect, depression, sleep, the non-react dimension of mindfulness and the interpersonal awareness dimension of interpersonal mindfulness.

Conclusion:

CARE fills an important professional development need long ignored by education research. The program may reduce burnout, alleviating school district personnel health care costs, absenteeism and early resignation and may help teachers establish supportive relationships with students at risk of school failure, thereby promoting school attachment and school climate.  Finally, CARE may improve classroom climate that may result in improvements in students’ academic achievement, thus supporting initiatives and policy aimed at these outcomes.