101 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Elementary School Teachers: A Qualitative study example a qualitative study by Sharp & Jennings (2016) in which researchers conducted semi-structured interviews at K-12 teachers (N = 8) to examine how participants utilized mindfulness techniques learned from an adapted MBI teacher training. Participants reported applying mindfulness strategies in three key ways: (1) focusing on present emotions, (2) reframing emotional responses to situations, and (3) utilizing metaphors introduced in a MBI-teacher program. As a result, participants reported a shift in their emotional reactions and approach to students. But also a study by Hwang et al (2019), including interviews of 6 elementary school and 4 special school teachers after an 8-week MBI teacher program, revealed that learning to be mindful and self-compassionate could function as self-help skills, promote person-centred teaching practices, and enhance interconnectivity between teachers and students. The study provides some evidence that mindfulness-based programs can contribute to changes in teacher well-being and teaching practices. In addition a study by Mackenzie et al (2020) evaluated the effects of an 8-week MBI teacher program on 80 teachers and school staff of elementary, middle and high schools, using individual exit interviews and focus groups. The qualitative findings revealed that teachers found the ability to slow down, pause, and stop as a key component of increased social-emotional competence in the classroom. The study suggests that mindfulness skills can empower teachers to respond to classroom pressures in ways that improve classroom climate quality for both educators and students. The study concludes that cultivating present-moment awareness through mindfulness training may improve the social-emotional competence of educators and support a prosocial classroom. However, they suggest that more research is needed to determine if helping educators change their relationship to time may be an important key to accessing greater levels of awareness that allow for the development of mind states that form the basis of the prosocial classroom’ (p.2755, Mackenzie et al., 2020). These studies showed how mixed teachers populations experience the influence of an MBI intervention on their professional functioning and how they apply mindfulness in their school environments. To our knowledge, there is only one qualitative study (Schlusser et al.,2019), which focused solely on elementary school teachers (k-5 inner city teachers). This study examined the relationship between home practice and reperceiving for teachers who participated in an MBI teacher program. The study (N = 16) found no differences between practice groups in reported stress levels, but differences were found in mindfulness and efficacy. The no practice group engaged in more suppression and felt less capable of handling stressors, while teachers who adopted practice described an emerging awareness of negative emotions, more ability to let go of stressors, and greater affirmation of the importance of self-care. Based on these qualitative studies on MBIs so far, we can conclude that more research is needed to understand how and why MBIs exert their effect in elementary school teachers. In sum, although there is already evidence for the effectiveness of MBIs on teacher functioning in education, however, as far as we know, no qualitative research so far has focused on standard MBSR for elementary school teachers within the European school system, focusing not only on professional functioning of the teachers, but also on personal 6
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