Effects of mindfulness based therapy on compassion and response to stress in special education teachers

Abstract

Encouragement is an important concept of Adlerian psychology and refers to the expression of confirmation through language or other symbolic illustration to instill courage in a person within the context of addressing a challenging situation or recognizing a potential. Receiving encouragement would enhance social connectedness, academic performance, motivation and self-efficacy in students. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effect of mindfulness-based therapy on compassion and response to stress of special needs school teachers. The study was a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. Statistical population included all special needs school teachers of Bandar Abbas (Iran) in 2022. Participants were 30 special needs school teachers were selected by accessible sampling and randomly assigned to in experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). Participants responded to Stress Response Inventory (SRI) and Compassion of Others' Lives (COOL) Scale. The experimental group received eight two-hour sessions of mindfulness training and the control group did not receive any training. Data were analyzed by univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance. The results indicated that intervention decreased the response to stress and increased compassion in teachers (p<.01). Therefore, providing this training is considered useful strategy for improving the health outcomes in teachers.

Keywords

• mindfulness
• special education schools
• teachers
• response to stress
• compassion