93 Potential mediators in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program for elementary school teachers to reduce perceived stress and improve well-being and classroom climate: A multiple mediation model the reduction in stress among public school teachers who followed a mindfulness training (Roeser et al., 2013; Taylor et al., 2016). In addition, self-compassion has been identified as a mediator in MBSR programs for patient populations for the improvement of wellbeing (Evans et al., 2018), positive mental health (Geurts et al., 2021) and reduction in psychological symptoms (Sevel et al., 2020). Also in a non-clinical population selfcompassion was found to be a mediator in increasing mental well-being (Maloney et al., 2023). Further, our findings showed that emotion regulation is an important aspect of MBSR in reducing stress. This could be explained by the fact that when people are better able to recognize and regulate their emotions, it allows them to respond more calmly and effectively to challenging situations. Taylor and colleagues (2016) also suggest that emotion regulation is a way for mindfulness training to reduce teachers perceived job stress. In addition, other studies found that teacher stress is decreased when they could better regulate their emotions (Montgomery & Rupp, 2005; Skinner & Beers, 2016; Taylor et al., 2016; Tsang et al., 2023). Moreover, our findings showed that teacher self-efficacy mediates the effect of MBSR on classroom climate quality. When self-efficacy is increased, teachers believe more in their own abilities and feel more secure. Studies found that high-efficacy teachers were better able to deal with different behavior problems or student misbehavior (for example bullying), had less conflictual relations with pupils and were better on dealing with challenging pupils (Almog & Shechtman, 2007; Zee & Koomen, 2016). Teacher selfefficacy has also a positive impact on the engagement of pupils in the lessons (Holzberger et al., 2014) and helps teachers to better deal with stress in the classroom like classroom disruptions (McCarthy & Lineback, 2015). When teachers are more confident in dealing with challenging situations or classroom disruptions, lessons will take place more calmer and less messy. This will lead to a better classroom atmosphere and learning environment for the pupils. Some of the mediating effects that were found in the simple mediation models were not found in the multiple mediation models. For example, mindfulness skills is a mediator in the simple mediation models for perceived stress and well-being, but not in the multiple mediation models. In the multiple models, self-compassion and emotion regulation were more important than mindfulness skills. This finding could be explained by the fact that the bivariate Pearson correlations showed moderate to strong significant correlations between mindfulness skills, self-compassion, and emotion regulation (Table 2). This means that these concepts are interrelated and could reinforce each other. Therefore, adding mindfulness to the model may not lead to a larger explained variance. Further research could add one or more measurements during the intervention. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding about the changes over time and to delve more deeply into the dynamics of the mediators during the intervention. 5
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