Why caring for teachers matters: assessing the impact of clinical therapy on educator wellbeing and student social-emotional growth

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Teaching has been a stressful profession for decades, but the recent pandemic and pupil mental health crisis have caused more teachers to report poor emotion regulation and feelings of helplessness in the profession. Research indicates that pupils in classrooms in which there is high teacher stress and low teacher coping also report higher levels of stress and low competency in coping. But there is a weaker understanding of how effective adult mental health and wellbeing interventions can positively impact student emotion regulation. Furthermore, most educators do not have the resources to access supports for wellbeing to get and keep themselves mentally healthy and most optimally resourced to build healthy classrooms and support students.

PURPOSE: This study sought to determine whether access to an individual clinical mental health intervention resource a) supported stronger teacher mental health and wellbeing and b) if that intervention translated to stronger socio-emotional and wellbeing indicators for their students. A project was designed to provide educators with on-site clinical cognitive behavioural psychotherapy from licensed Mental Health Professionals during the school day at no financial cost to the educator.

METHODS: Quantitative data was collected from 107 control group educators and 14 intervention group educators using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Medstar Georgetown WISE Centre Education Wellbeing Survey which included subscales from the Cognitive Affect for Mindfulness Scale- Revised (CAMS-R) and The Teacher Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (TSWQ). A change score was used to account for differences and variability in sampling at baseline. This data was analysed using paired samples t-testing within the intervention group and independent sample t-testing between groups to distinguish differences in the two groups at both before and after intervention cycles. Pupil quantitative data was collected using the Empower K12 ThriveK12 Student Wellbeing Survey from pupils at both control schools and intervention schools. Pupil data was analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) testing to compare the difference in groups of pupils given the exposure to the intervention over time. Three groups were assessed: 1) pupils in control schools (n= 178), pupils in intervention schools but without a teacher engaged in therapy (n= 66), 3) pupils in intervention schools with a teacher engaged in therapy (n= 44). Qualitative Data was also collected from 7 adult educator clients post-intervention using semi-structured interview. Qualitative data were analysed thematically using reflexive thematic analysis.

ADULT FINDINGS: This study found that clinical therapy for educators was associated with positive wellbeing outcomes for adult educators and showed positive correlation with growth in socio-emotional indicators for the students of those educators. In comparing educators’ fall & spring wellbeing scores, results indicated that educators who received the intervention showed decreased symptoms of perceived stress between the pre and post assessments. Additionally, educators who received the intervention reported significantly higher improvement in emotion regulation indicators than their peers who did not. The quantitative data did not show statistically significant differences in perceived self-efficacy growth between educators who received the intervention and those that did not. Qualitative data further indicated that educators perceived the intervention to have a positive effect on their wellbeing and their ability to connect with their students and regulate their classrooms. This finding suggests an efficacious treatment effect of the intervention for educators and their students.

STUDENT FINDINGS: In comparing students’ fall & spring wellbeing scores in which 0= control school, 1 = intervention school but no exposure to therapy and 2 = students whose teachers received therapy, the 0:1 pairwise comparison, produced a mean difference of .05505 with p=.772 with the 95% confidence interval from -.2442 to .031. The 2:0 pairwise comparison between student’s whose teacher received therapy and students at the control school produced a mean difference of .3 with p=.004 and a 95% Confidence Interval from .0830 to .0525. The 2:1 pairwise comparison between students whose teachers received therapy at the intervention school and students who were in the intervention school but whose teachers did not receive therapy, the mean difference was .35985 with p=.003 with a Confidence Interval range of .1044 to .6153. This data indicates that the intervention group receiving exposure to therapy showed a greater statistically significant improvement than the group in the intervention school who did not have direct exposure to therapy through their teacher.

CONCLUSION: This study makes a critical contribution to the research on the distal impacts of adult educator clinical wellbeing interventions on student socio-emotional indicators, of which there has been little quantitative data in the research to date. This research indicates that it is effective to eliminate barriers to mental health treatment for educators as a means of increasing both adult educator and student wellbeing within a school setting. Further research is indicated in expanding this study beyond the primary, urban, American public charter school context to assess for applicability and scalability in other K12 academic domains both within the United States and beyond.