102 Chapter 6 functioning and in turn effects on classroom climate quality. The present explorative qualitative study aims to extend previous studies by examining the impact of a standard 8-week MBSR intervention on their personal functioning, professional functioning and the classroom climate quality, as perceived by elementary school teachers themselves. It also extends the study of Lomas et al (2017) which recommended that more research is needed to understand how mechanisms operate. The aim of the present study was to gain more insight in elementary school teachers experiences with the standard MBSR intervention. As a starting point we aimed to examine perceived effects of MBSR on three main themes: Personal functioning, professional functioning and classroom climate quality. In order to be able to triangulate the qualitative data, we used two different sources: interviews during the last session of MBSR and focus group interviews 16 weeks after MBSR. METHODS Participants were recruited from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the effectiveness of MBSR versus waitlist control for elementary school teachers, including measures at pre- and post-MBSR, with three months follow-up after completion of the course (Lensen et al., 2024). The study protocol was ethically approved by the Internal Review Board (IRB) of the Ethics Committee Social Science, Faculty of social sciences Radboud University and is registered under number ECSW-2019-029. Participants Participants included in the RCT met the following inclusion criteria: a) teaching at least two days a week in the same year group (grade 1 to 8, comparable to grades 1 to 6 in the US school system), during a school year between September and March (moment of follow-up); b) willing to fill out questionnaires in Dutch three times during a school year; and c) being able to start MBSR in either September or March. Exclusion criteria were previous participation in an MBI or a mindfulness-based workshop of more than three hours duration. Teachers who participated in the RCT between September 2020 until April 2021 were invited for the current qualitative study. Three semi-structured focus groups, each consisting of 6 or 7 participants, were conducted with 20 from the 26 teachers in the RCT intervention groups. The other 6 indicated that they were too busy to participate. Twenty-six of 27 teachers of the RCT control group participating in MBSR after the follow-up assessment in March 2021, attended the last session. They were divided into 3 groups consisting of 8, 9 or 10 participants. Consequently, 46 teachers from 23 different schools participated in this qualitative study: 20 from the RCT intervention group and 26 from the RCT control group who completed the program after completion of the study. Sociodemographic characteristics for focus group and last session participants are provided in Table 1.
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