Background: Mindfulness effects on students and teachers have been examined in several studies. In the present study, we add a focus on the potential effects mindfulness has on teacher-student relationships. Teacher-student relationships are considered the core of educational processes, and were consistently found to significantly affect students’ wellbeing and social and academic competence. Mindfulness was shown to increase capacities which are crucial for developing and sustaining positive, satisfying interpersonal relationships such as empathy, emotion regulation, kindness, respect and compassion. Such capacities were also directly linked with improved teacher-student relationships.
Hypotheses: We hypothesized that teachers’ dispositional mindfulness will decrease their self-centeredness, and that this amelioration will produce an improvement their relationships with students, which will, in turn, increase teachers’ wellbeing and decrease their burnout.
Sample: 74 homeroom teachers (3rd to 6thgrades) from 6 public elementary schools in Israel.
Design: The teachers completed self-report measures of their dispositional mindfulness, decentering, relationships with students, wellbeing and burnout. Assessments were conducted at the beginning (T1) and end (T2) of the school year.
Results:
Hierarchical regressions analyses indicated that teachers’ dispositional mindfulness ratings in T1 were associated with increased decentering (reflecting decreased self-centeredness), better quality of relationships with students, increased wellbeing, and decreased burnout in T2. Subsequent mediation analyses revealed that teachers’ increased decentering and improved relationships with students mediated the association of dispositional mindfulness in T1 with decreased burnout in T2, and that teachers’ relationships with students mediated the association of dispositional mindfulness in T1 with wellbeing in T2.
Scientific Contribution:
The findings suggest that teachers’ enhanced decentering and the related improvement in teacher-student relationships may underlie some of the positive effects of teachers’ dispositional mindfulness (e.g., on wellbeing). These findings suggest that dispositional mindfulness in teachers has critical effects on functioning in interpersonal contexts, which may be crucial to its impact in schools.