Meeting Teachers with Mindfulness: The effects of a brief online mindfulness intervention on teacher stress and burnout

Abstract

A teacher mental health crisis has led to high rates of teacher attrition and mass shortages in education jobs (Swider & Zimmerman, 2010). As of 2023, 90% of public- school districts in the United States report struggling to hire new teachers and nearly half of public schools report understaffing issues according to the National Center for Education Statistics survey which included more than 1,3000 public schools (2023). When asked why teachers decide to leave their jobs, high stress and burnout are among the most cited reasons (Gray et al., 2017, Kim et al., 2021). Teacher mental well-being has a direct and positive affect on school performance and student well-being (Briner & Drewberry, 2007, Swider & Zimmerman, 2010). Therefore, a viable stress and burnout intervention that is cost- and time- effective, accessible, scalable and empirically sound is imperative to solving the teacher shortage crisis and benefitting both educators and students in public-school systems. The level of stress that teachers experience has often been compared to that of doctors and the military (Gray et al., 2017). To alleviate feelings of stress and burnout in these other demanding jobs, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has been well- documented as a successful intervention tool (Clough et a., 2017, Roser et al., 2013, Flook et al., 2013). Additionally, limited research shows that MSBR might also have success in decreasing levels of stress and burnout in teachers. Recent studies have piloted mindfulness interventions, both online and in person, with teacher populations globally and have witnessed promising success (Roser et al., 2013, Flook et al., 2013, Janssen et al., 2022). However, research has found that teachers are not only reluctant to reach out for mental health support due to fear of judgement regarding their job competency (McCarthy, 2019), but also lack the extra time in their daily schedules to seek mental health interventions such as therapy outside of school (Flook et al., 2013). Additionally, though occupational interventions have been shown to be more beneficial for teachers than personal interventions (Routsalainen et al., 2008), teachers often hold a bias against after-school trainings and view them as wastes of time, uninteresting, and not useful (Damianidou, 2019). Providing mental health care for educators while respecting their time constraints is necessary to benefit a greater number of teachers.This study aims to explore the stress and burnout levels amongst different types of teachers across various years of experiences, subjects, and grade level. This study also asks if a brief, one-session, online MBSR intervention will have a meaningful impact on stress and burnout levels for teachers. The study hypothesizes that the brief online intervention using mindfulness will decrease levels of teacher stress and burnout and will show success for all types of teachers. This hypothesis was tested with an online study sent out to teachers through school district email listservs and social media websites. Levels of stress and burnout prior to and following the MSBR intervention were recorded using The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and The Maslach Burnout Inventory - Educator Survey (MBI-ES), as well as self-reported rating scales. Baseline and post-intervention scores were collected and compared to access intervention effect.