Promoting Teachers' Social and Emotional Competence, Well-Being and Classroom Quality: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Care for Teachers Professional Development Program

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. To do this, teachers must employ a high degree of social and emotional competence (SEC). However, most teacher preparation programs do not prepare teachers to manage these demands.

Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers) is a mindfulness-based professional development program designed to reduce stress, promote social and emotional competence and improve teachers’ performance and classroom learning environments. The present study evaluated the efficacy of CARE intervention for K-5 teachers, classrooms, and students using a 3-level (students, teachers, schools) multi-site cluster randomized trial design with treatment assignment at level 2 (teachers) and schools serving as naturally occurring blocks.

The sample consisted of 36 highly diverse urban elementary schools, 226 teachers and 5036 students. Teachers were randomized within schools to CARE or wait-list control groups. CARE was delivered to teachers over 5 days with inter-session coaching by phone. Data were collected over three waves: pre- and post-intervention, and 6 month follow-up. At each wave, teachers completed a battery of self-report measures to assess efficacy, mindfulness, time urgency, distress tolerance and distress. Teachers also reported on their students’ engagement, achievement, behavior, and relationship quality, and classrooms were observed and coded using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS).  Student achievement records were collected from the local Department of Education.

No significant intervention/control group differences were found on any baseline measures or on sample demographic characteristics. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to estimate treatment impacts (CARE versus professional development as usual) on teacher and classroom proximal outcomes and student level outcomes. For this paper we report on the teacher and classroom outcomes only. Preliminary analyses (HLM with no covariates except baseline scores) showed that CARE had significant direct positive effects on mindfulness (d = .26, p = .007) and time urgency (d = .24, p = .015). A positive trend was found for distress (d =.18, p = .06,). No effects were found for distress tolerance or efficacy. CARE had significant direct positive effects on the classroom organization domain of the CLASS (d = .16, p = .05) and a positive trend was found for the emotional support domain of the CLASS (d = .16, p = .06). No effects were found for the instructional support domain.