Care for Teachers Mindfulness-Based Professional Development: Results of a Large-Scale Cluster Randomized Control Trial

Introduction: Teachers’ social and emotional competence and well-being impact their ability to cultivate and maintain quality learning environments and manage occupational stressors. Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers) is a professional development program that combines emotion skills training and mindful awareness practices designed to address these concerns. We report on the results of a large cluster randomized controlled trial demonstrating impacts of CARE for Teachers on (1) teacher well-being and classroom quality over one school year, (2) teacher well-being in a subsequent school year, and 3) direct, moderated, and mediated effects on students.

Methods: The study included 224 teachers and their 5200 students in 36 public elementary schools. Teachers were randomly assigned within schools to intervention or a waitlist control groups. Data include teacher self-reports of psychological distress, time urgency, mindfulness, emotion regulation and efficacy (Fall-Spring-Fall) and observations of classroom interaction quality and teacher-reports of student academic and social dimensions (Fall-Spring). CARE was delivered in five full-day sessions; four delivered during the fall semester and a booster session delivered early in the spring semester. Primary study outcomes between pre- and post-intervention were analyzed using 2-level hierarchical linear models to account for the clustering of teachers within schools. We used three-level hierarchical linear growth models to examine the effects of CARE on changes in the same variables from the fall of one school year to the fall of the following year.

Results: CARE had significant positive impacts on teachers’ emotion regulation, mindfulness, psychological distress, and time urgency, and on observed emotional support in the classroom. CARE continued to have positive impacts on teachers’ emotion regulation and psychological distress one year later. CARE also had direct impacts on one of four teacher-reported student outcomes, engagement in learning. There were positive impacts on student reading competence among students of teachers low in initial mindfulness and among students reported by teachers as low in initial social skills. Intervention related improvements in teacher mindfulness were related to improvements in student engagement, motivation for learning, and social skills, and improvement in teacher emotion regulation benefitted student social skills.

Conclusions: This is the most rigorous investigation of a teacher mindfulness-based intervention to date. Positive short- and intermediate-term impacts were found in key domains of teacher functioning and on student engagement in learning, particularly benefitting academic skills (reading competence) for students at ecological risk (low teacher mindfulness) and behavioral risk (low student social skills).