Abstract
Teaching is a demanding profession with teachers of very young children reporting high rates of stress and exhaustion. We tested the effects of a relationship-focused professional development intervention designed to enhance teachers’ use of mindfulness-based strategies to support coping on trajectories of teachers’ stress, exhaustion (emotional, physical, and mental), and coping. Infant and toddler teachers (N = 81) from Early Head Start (EHS) or EHS childcare partnerships (CCP) were randomized to the intervention or usual care control condition. Using ecological momentary assessment, teachers completed twice-weekly reports of stress, exhaustion, coping, and coping strategy effectiveness via smartphones for 40 weeks. Multilevel linear regression modeling, accounting for within-person repeated measures, showed no intervention effects on stress and exhaustion trajectories. Teachers in the intervention reported increased use of mindfulness-based strategies for coping over time as compared to the control group, although frequency of use peaked and then declined. While perceptions of stress and exhaustion did not change, teachers’ increased use of mindfulness-based strategies suggests improvements in how teachers managed stress and exhaustion; however, the decline in use of coping suggests the need for ongoing support within the workplace.
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Data Availability
As analyses for the study are ongoing, data are not currently available. All protocols, measures, and syntax are available upon request from the first author. This study utilizes some data from Hearts and Minds on Babies (HMB) Study (A. Stacks, PI). The HMB Study was registered with the Registry of Efficacy and Effectiveness Studies Registry (REES; https://sreereg.icpsr.umich.edu/sreereg/), Registry ID 126.1v2.
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This work was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) to the first author, R21HD090406, and a grant from the Administration for Children and Families to the second (PI) author, 90YR0092-04–00. Pilot work on use of the smartphone app was funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project MICL02393/MIC02700.
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HEB-H: conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, project administration, supervision. Writing—original draft; AMS: conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, project administration, supervision, Writing—original draft; CF: roles/writing—original draft; AB: conceptualization, data curation, methodology, formal analysis, writing—original draft; JC: investigation, data curation, project administration; HAP- writing—review and editing; CDV: conceptualization, supervision, writing—review and editing; RC: methodology, writing-review and editing; PJ: conceptualization, Writing—review and editing.
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Brophy-Herb, H.E., Stacks, A.M., Frosch, C. et al. The Effects of a Relationship-Focused Professional Development Intervention on Infant and Toddler Teachers’ Mindfulness-Based Strategies for Coping. Early Childhood Educ J 52, 243–257 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01416-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01416-0