56 Chapter 4 heightened emotional involvement in teaching (Statistics Netherlands, 2020). Given these distinctions, a reasonable hypothesis is that MBIs may exhibit more pronounced effects in elementary schools. Moreover, the majority of studies investigating mindfulness for teachers focus on MBIs specifically tailored to the educational context. Consequently, these interventions often deviate in terms of content and duration from the standard MBSR program. Numerous studies collectively suggest that these MBIs yielded positive effects. First, the meta-analysis of 29 studies by Klingbeil and Renshaw (2018) evaluated teacher interventions in which training mindfulness skills was the primary therapeutic component. This included standard or adapted versions of MBSR, but also programs such as Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques-in-education (SMART) (Cullen & Wallace, 2010), Cultivating Awareness Resilience in Education (CARE) (Jennings et al., 2011) and Cultivating Emotional Balance Training (Kemeny et al., 2012). There was a large variety in duration (from 2 to 36 weeks) and dosage (from 2 to 75 hours) of the MBIs. The impact on teachers’ occupational stress and burnout ranged from small to medium, accompanied by enhancements in mindfulness skills and psychological well-being. A meta-analytic review of MBIs, including 18 manuscripts with a total of 1001 in-service teachers (Zarate et al., 2019), has found similar findings. Furthermore, MBIs contributed to a slight improvement in the quality of teachers’ interactions with students and the overall classroom climate. Another systematic review (Hwang et al.,2017) including 16 intervention studies with a mixed teacher population on MBIs (e.g. CARE, adapted MBSR) showed large effects on perceived stress and mindfulness skills, medium effects on self-compassion and small effects on teacher self-efficacy. In addition, from a systematic review and narrative synthesis (Emerson et al.,2017) on the effects of MBIs for K-12 teachers (e.g. SMART, CARE, adapted MBSR, Mindful Based Wellness Education; Poulin et al., 2009) it was concluded that MBIs resulted in improvements in mindfulness skills, emotion regulation and self-compassion. Consequently, these enhancements played a role in reducing stress levels among teachers and fostering an increase in teacher self-efficacy. While these overview studies exhibit promising effects, it’s essential to note that the majority of included studies were conducted in the USA and encompassed a diverse teacher population. Notably, a recent study by de Carvalho et al. (2021) examined the effects of MBIs specifically for elementary school teachers. This recent research, involving 228 Portuguese elementary school teachers, stands out as one of the few European RCTs, albeit without a longer-term follow-up. The intervention group reported a significant increase in well-being, mindfulness skills, emotional regulation, and selfefficacy. However, classroom observations revealed only short-term benefits for teachers’ classroom climate quality. This study enriches existing literature by investigating the effects of a standard 8-week MBSR program on Dutch elementary school teachers. Our primary outcome on mental health is perceived stress, and our secondary outcome is well-being. Secondary measures also include teacher self-efficacy, teacher-perceived
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