Evaluation of a compassionate mind training intervention with school teachers and support staff
Journal article
Authors | Maratos, Frances, Montague, Jane, Ashra, Hajra, Welford, Mary, Wood, Wendy, Barnes, Christopher, Sheffield, David and Gilbert, Paul |
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Abstract | 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. |
Keywords | Compassionate Mind Training;; ; ; ; ; Implementation; Well-being; Mixed-Methods; Education; Retention |
Year | 2019 |
Journal | Mindfulness |
Journal citation | 10, p. 2245–2258 |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
ISSN | 18688527 |
18688535 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01185-9 |
Web address (URL) | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-019-01185-9 |
http://hdl.handle.net/10545/623958 | |
hdl:10545/623958 | |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | 29 Jun 2019 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 22 May 2019 |
Deposited | 04 Jul 2019 |
Contributors | University of Derby |
File | File Access Level Open |
File | File Access Level Open |
https://repository.derby.ac.uk/item/94332/evaluation-of-a-compassionate-mind-training-intervention-with-school-teachers-and-support-staff
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