Heartfulness in education: The effects of mindful self-compassion training on teachers’ wellbeing, student-teacher relationships, and school climate

Our society’s future and growth depends on high-quality education. On a daily basis, this notion translates into teachers’ ability to compassionately nourish young people’s minds and hearts, especially during challenging times. Given the current worldwide instabilities, teaching profession is increasingly more demanding on teachers’ capacity to preserve supportive and learning-conducive classroom environment. Unfortunately, teachers’ stress levels continue to rise together with associated negative consequences, such as burnout, depersonalization, or emotion exhaustion. There is a need to promote “heartfulness” in education by supporting teachers’ wellbeing, such as by strengthening teachers’ ability to practice effective self-care, compassion, and caring attitude to themselves as well as their students and colleagues. This study intends to evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness and self-compassion- based intervention program for teachers in the Czech Republic. Specifically, we will measure how teachers’ wellbeing, the quality of teacher-student relationships, and the overall school social climate changes as a result of an 8-session mindfulness and self-compassion training. The study intends to recruit 120 teachers from 4 schools and compare the results between the intervention and control teachers before and after the program and at one-year follow-up.