Reducing Teacher Stress and Building a More Effective School Culture

教师的心理健康和学校文化是预防青少年问题和确保青少年成功发展的重要因素，但在很大程度上被忽视。倦怠和抑郁在教师中很常见。它们影响教师留在实地的可能性，并破坏教师的有效性。在缺乏共同价值观、合作和关怀的学校中，教师的倦怠程度更高，这是导致问题的重要因素，包括无效的行为管理、高教师流动率、低质量的教学和胁迫行为。然而，尽管个别教师的心理健康和大学校园文化的重要性，改善这些方面的学校的策略研究是严重有限的。减少教师压力和建立有效的学校组织的一个有希望的候选人包括接受为重点的干预措施。这种方法导致了抑郁症和倦怠的减少，以及对人类服务组织客户的污名化态度。它促进了基于证据的做法的采用，并增加了学前教育的合作和支持。到目前为止，还没有人在公立学校测试过这种方法的价值。我们建议进行一项实验评估的接受为重点的干预，以减少教师的困扰，提高中学教师的学校合议。我们打算随机分配48所俄勒冈州正在实施积极行为支持（PBS）的中学接受或不接受干预。我们期望教师的心理灵活性和幸福感，学校的合议，使用积极的行为支持的做法，和学生的受害水平将改善与干预。除了与我们的次要目标相关的结果外，我们还将检查这些结果：检查干预是否对更远的学生结果产生积极影响，这些结果包括偏差同伴形成，心理健康，行为结果和学业成绩。干预效果的潜在调节因素，如干预前的经验回避水平，同事关系，性别，学校类型和种族/民族的工作人员将被检查。我们还将测试干预措施的变化是否介导了干预条件和工作人员结果之间的关联。公共卫生相关性：拟议的随机对照研究将检查基于接受的干预措施对减少教师痛苦和增加学校合作的影响。现有的证据，大多是非实验性的，研究表明，这样的干预可以创造一个积极的大学校园文化，更有可能支持积极的社会发展的工作人员和学生，并影响工作人员采用，实施和维护循证实践。这项研究应该是一个高度优先，因为倦怠和抑郁症是常见的教师，影响许多人离开教学领域，并破坏他们的有效性作为教师和有效的干预措施缺乏。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Teachers' psychological wellbeing and school culture are important, but largely overlooked, factors in efforts to prevent adolescent problems and ensure young people's successful development. Burnout and depression are common among teachers. They affect the likelihood teachers will stay in the field and undermine teacher effectiveness. Teachers in schools that lack shared values, cooperation, and caring experience higher levels of burnout, which is a significant contributor to problems, including ineffective behavior management, high teacher turnover, low quality instruction, and coercive behavior. Yet, despite the importance of individual teacher's psychological wellbeing and a collegial school culture, research on strategies for improving these aspects of schools is seriously limited. One promising candidate for reducing teacher stress and creating effective school organizations consists of acceptance-focused interventions. This approach has led to a reduction in depression and burnout and stigmatizing attitudes toward clients of human service organizations. It has fostered adoption of evidence- based practices, and increased cooperation and support in preschools. To date no one has tested the value of this approach in public schools. We propose to conduct an experimental evaluation of an acceptance-focused intervention for reducing teacher distress and increasing school collegiality among middle school teachers. We intend to assign randomly 48 Oregon Middle schools, which are implementing Positive Behavior Support (PBS), to receive or not receive the intervention. We expect that teachers' psychological flexibility and wellbeing, school collegiality, use of positive behavior support practices, and the level of victimization among students will improve with the intervention. We will examine these outcomes in addition to results related to our secondary aim: an examination of whether the intervention has positive impact on more distal student outcomes of deviant peer formation, psychological wellbeing, behavioral outcomes, and academic performance. Potential moderators of intervention effects, such as pre-intervention levels of experiential avoidance, collegial relations, gender, school type and race/ethnicity of the staff will be examined. We will also test whether changes in response to the intervention mediate the association between the intervention condition and staff outcomes. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed randomized-controlled study would examine the effects of an acceptance-based intervention for reducing teacher distress and increasing schools' collegiality. Evidence from existing, mostly non-experimental, studies indicates that such an intervention could create a positive collegial school culture that is more likely to support positive social development of staff and students and to influence staff to adopt, implement, and maintain evidence-based practices. This research should be a high priority because burnout and depression are common among teachers, influence many to leave the field of teaching, and undermine their effectiveness as teachers and effective interventions are lacking.