Reducing Teacher Stress and Building a More Effective School Culture

说明(申请人提供)：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了。职业倦怠和抑郁在教师中很常见。它们影响了教师留在现场的可能性，并削弱了教师的有效性。在缺乏共同价值观、合作和关怀的学校，教师会经历更高程度的职业倦怠，这是导致问题的重要因素，包括行为管理不力、教师流失率高、教学质量低和强迫行为。然而，尽管个别教师的心理健康和大学校园文化很重要，但关于改善学校这些方面的策略的研究严重有限。在减轻教师压力和创建有效的学校组织方面，一个有希望的候选方案是以接纳为重点的干预措施。这种方法减少了抑郁和倦怠，并使人们对人类服务组织客户的态度蒙上污名。它促进了循证做法的采用，并增加了学前教育中的合作和支持。到目前为止，还没有人在公立学校测试这种方法的价值。我们建议对一项以接受为中心的干预措施进行实验评估，以减少中学教师的痛苦，增加学校的合议性。我们打算随机分配48所正在实施积极行为支持(PBS)的俄勒冈州中学接受或不接受干预。我们期望教师的心理弹性和幸福感、学校的协作性、积极行为支持实践的使用以及学生的受害程度都会随着干预的进行而提高。除了与我们的第二个目标相关的结果外，我们还将检查这些结果：检查干预是否对更远端的学生偏差同伴形成、心理健康、行为结果和学业表现产生积极影响。将审查干预效果的潜在调节因素，如干预前的经验回避水平、合校关系、性别、学校类型和工作人员的种族/民族。我们还将测试干预反应的变化是否会调解干预条件与员工结果之间的联系。公共卫生相关性：这项拟议的随机对照研究将检验基于接纳的干预措施对减少教师痛苦和增加学校合作的效果。来自现有研究的证据表明，这种干预可以创造一种积极的大学校园文化，更有可能支持教职员工和学生的积极社会发展，并影响教职员工采用、实施和保持循证做法。这项研究应该是高度优先的，因为职业倦怠和抑郁在教师中很常见，影响了许多人离开教学领域，并由于缺乏有效的教师和干预措施而削弱了他们的有效性。

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.