There are more than 2500 teachers in the UK and Ireland trained to teach MBPs to students, across approximately 2000 schools (Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group [MAPPG]
2015; Mindfulness in Schools Project [MiSP], personal communication, 10 May, 2018). Recent recommendations to train more teachers to deliver mindfulness to their students are welcome (MAPPG
2015), yet it seems prudent to first examine the experiences of school staff who have implemented MBPs in their classrooms before rolling out larger-scale implementation in schools. As is common in MBP research, most studies on mindfulness in schools have focused on stage I and II (which focus on intervention generation, refinement, and efficacy) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stage model (Dimidjian and Segal
2015; Onken et al.
2014). As schools are already offering MBP programmes for their staff and students, however, it is important to balance the development research with research on how MBPs are implemented in the community (i.e. NIH Stages IV and V). Dimidjian and Segal (
2015) identified the dearth of Stage IV and V studies in MBP research, with under 2% of the MBP studies they reviewed falling into these two categories, and called for more MBP research based on implementation and dissemination. To date, although there is some putative evidence that MBPs may contribute to teacher and student wellbeing, little is known about how MBPs ‘in the real world’ are experienced by the school staff who implement them. This knowledge may help with the future implementations of MBPs in school settings.
A preliminary literature search was carried out in April 2019 through PsycINFO and Google Scholar using the search terms: ‘mindfulness’, ‘school’, ‘staff’ and ‘delivery’, searching for articles in the English language. To date, while there have been a range of studies on the impact of taking a mindfulness intervention on school staff member’s psychological functioning, the literature search revealed no research had yet been published on how staff experience both practising mindfulness and delivering MBPs to student groups.
Discussion
This study aimed to explore school staff’s experiences of teaching MBPs to students. In particular, it aimed to investigate how they found delivering MBPs; how practice and delivery of mindfulness affected aspects of their work life; and the wider context of what it is like to implement MBPs into the school community. The findings are congruent with previous quantitative studies about the effects of mindfulness practice on school staff (Roeser et al.
2013; Taylor et al.
2016) and reflections from other school-based practitioners and studies on issues around implementation (Jennings
2015; Wilde et al.
2019).
Overall, participants experienced delivering MBPs to students as worthwhile, enjoyable and fulfilling. Staff felt that teaching mindfulness was a resource for “Coping with … life” and was an antidote to the stress that students may experience in academic settings. Participants reported that student feedback was largely positive, although some students did not practice mindfulness outside of the classroom. There was a contrast between participant’s perception of mindfulness as an essential life-skill and some students’ lack of willingness to focus on the topic in class or invest time in it outside of school. This raises implementation questions about whether mindfulness practices are developmentally appropriate for young people (Kaiser-Greenland
2015) or if MBPs should be delivered through either conscript or voluntary sessions to students. Participants felt that delivering MBPs helped them integrate their personal practice of mindfulness into their work-lives and some reported a symbiotic relationship between their own practice and the delivery of the .b curriculum. They found it difficult to delineate between the two, as the ‘direct’ approach of delivery fed into the ‘indirect’ approach of embodying mindfulness in the classroom (Meiklejohn et al.
2012), and noted that an increasingly mindful approach to their work in schools had many benefits.
Staff reported that mindfulness practice benefitted their work lives: they felt more authentic, compassionate and present with others, and more able to “Step back” or decentre from interpersonal conflict. Some participants attributed this to their increased ability to be vulnerable as a teacher, and noted that this, in turn, led to students being more relaxed and open about their own vulnerabilities. This point is echoed by Himelstein (
2015), who notes that one of the most important factors in developing trusting relationships with adolescents is the degree to which adults are authentic and can admit to faults.
Participants found that their mindfulness practice enhanced their pro-social dispositions, which contributed towards experiences of better relationships at work. They noted an increase in acceptance or being able to “Just see [students] for what they are”, which led to greater feelings of understanding and compassion towards them. Other studies support these findings: Gold et al. (
2010) found that school staff who had completed an MBP reported statistically significant increases of ‘acceptance without judgement’; Kemeny et al. (
2012) reported that school staff practising mindfulness are more primed for a compassionate response; while Taylor et al. (
2016) found that teachers described difficult students with less negative language, seeing them in a ‘wider emotional light’. Two studies also reported large increases in teacher’s dispositional forgiveness (Benn et al.
2012; Taylor et al.
2016). Most of the school staff also discussed how teaching and practising mindfulness had led to greater kindness towards themselves, and increasing awareness and self-compassion are said to lead to increased compassion for others (McCown et al.
2011; Segal et al.
2013).
Participants reported that delivering and practising mindfulness led to fewer feelings of stress and negativity at work. One aspect of this involved being less emotionally reactive to student’s difficult behaviour. This could be linked to participants’ increased awareness of emotions and subsequent emotional regulation; a change which is reflected in the wider literature around the benefits of and mechanisms behind MBPs (Chambers et al.
2009; Feldman et al.
2010). The enhanced ability to ‘re-perceive’ (Shapiro et al.
2006) or ‘decentre’ (Segal et al.
2013) from difficult emotions was evidenced in the way school staff spoke of their experience of coping with stressors in school: bringing awareness to their own internal reactivity created some sense of distance (decentring) from the emotions felt, which led to a more considered response. MBPs for staff seem to show strongest promise and intermediary effects in the area of teacher’s emotional regulation (Emerson et al.
2017) which is significant as emotional reactivity is associated with increased negative interactions with students, stress and burnout in teachers (Montgomery and Rupp
2005).
In the wider literature on mindfulness in the workplace, concerns have been raised about whether increasing employee resilience (so they can better manage negative work events, for example) ‘coincides with passivity, allowing unhealthy patterns to continue unchecked’ (Good et al.
2016, p. 132). This is currently an open question in the field, but has not been investigated directly. The finding that four out of the eight participants reduced their hours or resigned was unexpected, and suggests that mindfulness practice did not somehow lead to passivity or the continuation of unhealthy patterns, but indeed the opposite. Two participants explicitly said that their mindfulness practice had led them to reconsider their work situation and the impact it was having on their well-being carefully, framing their decision to resign as an act of self-compassion. Unfortunately, the two participants who went from full time to part-time work were not asked what lead to this decision during the interviews because this was not an area we originally planned to investigate, so we do not know if the decision to reduce their work hours was linked to their mindfulness practice.
In terms of workforce health and productivity, staff member’s increased awareness of the strain a role is placing on them and their subsequent role change may benefit the school in the long-term. Recent research into ‘self-endangering work behaviour (SEWB)’, where employees engage in depleting activities such as extending their work hours to deal with work-related demands, showed that it increases the chances of health problems, impedes recovery from stress and also leads to more burnout (Dettmers et al.
2016). One participant in our study reported that practising mindfulness helped her to let go of the ‘be perfect’ script which had previously added to her feelings of deleterious stress; Rupprecht et al. (
2017) also discovered that a group of school staff who had taken an MBP reported statistically significant reductions in their work engagement post-intervention, in particular, in the areas of ‘willingness to work to exhaustion’ and ‘striving for less perfection’. For individuals, avoiding SEWB may lessen feelings of stress and could possibly lead to staff reporting fewer burnout symptoms, overall. This phenomenon, of half of the participants in the study choosing to self-care by reducing hours or changing career trajectory (and two explicitly attributing this to their mindfulness practice) is one which is worth exploring further, as it does not support the concern that offering MBPs to employees in the workplace can have unintended harmful impacts on employee passivity (Good et al.
2016). However, it should be noted at this point that due to the small sample size, generalisation is not possible. Additionally, the findings are based upon school educators who teach mindfulness to their students. As they
teach mindfulness, they are also more likely to be actively engaged in mindfulness practice than employees who take a one-off MBP, for example. Therefore, these findings may not extend to employees in other workplaces, and must be interpreted tentatively—but are worthy of further investigation to lend some clarity to the current debate.
Participants felt that using mindfulness in both their personal and professional life had enhanced their performance at work. They felt they dealt more effectively with challenging behaviour or prioritised activities which better reflected their own professional needs. This finding is similar to Rupprecht et al. (
2017) who noted that despite the MBP-intervention group reporting changes in work engagement, there was also a statistically significant increase in their sense of self-efficacy in the classroom; Emerson et al. (
2017) also noted that teachers reported an increased sense of self-efficacy after taking MBPs. Educational staff worldwide report high levels of fatigue and debilitation and the occupation is prone to high attrition rates: in Britain, the number of teachers who leave the profession is higher than the numbers who stay until retirement (Chang
2009). One aspect of burnout that is particularly pertinent for school staff is said to be a feeling of low ‘personal accomplishment’ (Maslach et al.
2010). If taking and delivering MBPs helps school staff to have a sense of fulfilment, as participants reported in this study, then it’s possible that supporting those who wish to practise or train in teaching mindfulness could lead to decreased staff burnout. This would complement other studies that have reported that school staff purely participating in an MBP decreases symptoms of burnout across all dimensions of the Maslach Burnout scale (Roeser et al.
2013), particularly in the dimensions of personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion (Flook et al.
2013). Participants in this study noted that they can better manage the stress and exhaustion that the teaching profession can bring; again, this is significant as teacher resilience positively correlates with improved student outcomes (Hwang et al.
2017).
The twin findings of school staff reducing SEWB (which may include career ‘downsizing’ or change) yet also experiencing feelings of greater self-efficacy raise interesting questions for educational employers about the nature of the school workforce required for the future. One possible outcome could be that staff who train in mindfulness may require more flexibility or autonomy at work and this may clash with practical issues connected with school administration, such as fixed timetables or meeting targets set by national government. Conversely, however, there is the possibility that staff who practice and are involved with mindfulness training may be more effective in their roles and experience less burnout, which might consequently raise standards and reduce staff turnover.
One of the most frequent implementation issues that participants discussed was support from colleagues and senior leaders. A few participants were senior enough to implement it themselves, but most depended on the support of senior management. Experienced teacher-practitioners have recommended that implementers share the emerging evidence base with senior leaders and create opportunities for them to practice, as ‘offering decision-makers a personal experience and practice dispels myths and misconceptions, and directly demonstrates the power of mindfulness’ (Willard
2015: p. 9). Burnett (
2015) also noted that introducing mindfulness to staff first is the most supportive way of embedding it in school culture, and Wilde et al. (
2019) discussed how misperceptions and a lack of genuine buy-in from the whole staff body can be a significant obstacle to implementing mindfulness in schools. This is in parallel with participant reports that staff bodies experiencing MBP courses/tasters was a large facilitator in implementation.
Participants were passionate about MBPs, which caused them to feel concerned about the potential for over-claiming for mindfulness interventions for students or rushing into MBP implementation by using teachers who were not properly trained. Likewise, commentators have also advised teachers to ‘avoid being too messianic about mindfulness’ and take a ‘slow and steady’ approach to embedding it in schools (Burnett
2015: p. 45–6). It is argued that caution is needed in a field where the evidence base is still emerging and contains many unknowns. Wilde et al. (
2019) reported that staff involved in the implementation of MBPs in school were equally worried about unqualified staff delivering interventions and their ability to deal with students who might have a ‘negative reaction’ to mindfulness. Recent research in the field of adult MBPs has also started to recognise that mindfulness teachers need to be experienced and trained well enough to recognise trauma and other contra-indications to mindfulness meditation (Britton
2016; Treleaven
2018). This indicates that those involved in the delivery of MBPs to young people should strive to minimise harm by presenting realistic assessments of what mindfulness can do for participants and ensuring that well-trained facilitators are in place.
Other studies which have investigated the implementation of school-based MBPs support additional findings in this study. Wilde et al. (
2019) noted that one major challenge is that early implementation is often spearheaded by a ‘champion’, whose energy and enthusiasm for mindfulness drives implementation, and this has also been found in other contexts, such as introducing MBCT into the UK health system (Crane and Kuyken
2013). In schools, this means that staff turnover can sometimes lead to the loss of MBP provision, if it has not been embedded, and several participants in this study were concerned that this would happen in their organisation. Desmond and Hanich (
2010) additionally outlined problems regarding class-scheduling in setting up sessions, while Joyce et al. (
2010) reported that staff delivering MBPs felt that lack of time amid ‘multiple curriculum commitments’ was the biggest barrier to implementation. Likewise, the current findings point to difficulties in finding curriculum time for MBPs in an already overloaded timetable, yet also note how crucial collegiate support is as a facilitator and how positive student feedback sustains and motivates these school staff to keep seeking ways to implement mindfulness in their schools.
To ensure integrated implementation within the school, participants spoke of the importance of offering mindfulness sessions and courses to senior leaders and co-workers first, in order to influence decision-making or to create a sub-group of practitioners in the school who could support each other. Wilde et al. stated that the delivery of MBPs to students is more effective when “offered as a regular and constant presence alongside opportunities for staff to experience mindfulness” (p. 11) so an initial focus on mindfulness at an institutional level seems be a factor in successful implementation. Additionally, participants were concerned that the current enthusiasm for mindfulness among some schools or teachers may not be tempered with solid teacher training in how to deliver mindfulness, and this has been raised as a concern by other school-teachers whose schools deliver MBPs (Wilde et al.
2019). Ruijgrok-Lupton et al. (
2018) showed that there is a correlation between the more time a mindfulness teacher spends in training and higher gains for adult participants in terms of well-being and reductions in stress, so the same may be true for school staff who deliver MBPs. However, this discussion would benefit from further research investigating what impact the school staff’s level of training and MBP teaching competency has on student outcomes.
There are several other areas of possible future research on this topic. Firstly, qualitative findings from the study could be triangulated with interviews with ‘key informants’, such as students and colleagues, or with other research such as classroom observations and behaviour or progress records for students, in order to assess any impact of claims about improved interpersonal relationships and teacher efficacy. Additionally, the increases in staff pro-social dispositions could be further researched using third person cognitive behavioural measures (e.g. computer-assisted tests), as Roeser et al. (
2013) suggested. Finally, more quantitative and qualitative research with schools that are successfully embedding mindfulness could be carried out, for example, by investigating what provision was offered to staff, or investigating other organisational supports as part of the journey towards wider implementation.
Qualitative research is concerned with generating insight and understanding into phenomena, rather than producing generalisable statements about the subject under study. As a result, findings from this small sample of eight cannot represent the experiences of all school staff delivering MBPs. However, as all participants shared similar experiences (such as increases in self-compassion or better relationships with students), it may be possible to extrapolate some tentative meaning; and the findings do fit with emerging quantitative evidence on how MBPs impact on school staff, and in turn, their students.
Another limitation may be connected to the researchers’ own context; the first author had spent several years implementing MBPs in a school as well as, on several occasions, working with MiSP. There are limitations to a researcher having such an ‘emic’ perspective, as while there could be a high degree of empathy and rapport with participants during data collection, there was still a draw towards supporting and promoting the work of MBPs, which an ‘etic’ researcher may not have had. The lead author aimed to mitigate this by keeping a reflective diary throughout the study. When potential bias was identified through reflection, she created memos and shared them with the second author, especially during the later stages of analysis when the theme framework was being drawn up and data was being triangulated. Member checks were also carried out with participants in an attempt to test the validity of interpretation.