Transcript
[0:01] Well, thank you very much again
[0:04] for all of you to be here. Thank you for
[0:06] the invitation to come all the way from
[0:08] Bogota, Colombia.
[0:10] Um
[0:11] as
[0:12] brother Pablo just said, my name is Anna
[0:14] Velasquez.
[0:16] I'm a psychologist
[0:18] and I've been working in education for
[0:19] the last 25 years.
[0:23] Uh I'm also more recently I have
[0:26] across my world
[0:28] as an educator, as a psychologist, I've
[0:31] been interested in understanding how to
[0:34] help children um
[0:37] develop the social, emotional, academic
[0:40] skills that I think will help their
[0:43] lives flourish.
[0:45] But most recently I've been much worried
[0:47] about those who care for our children,
[0:51] the teachers.
[0:52] So today I'm going to be sharing a piece
[0:54] of research that I've been doing more
[0:57] recently about teacher well-being
[0:59] and in particular with the
[1:02] relationship between
[1:04] teacher well-being and self-compassion
[1:06] and gratitude.
[1:08] So I would like to start by asking you
[1:11] to raise your hands if you have children
[1:14] at school right now.
[1:16] Okay. Thank you.
[1:19] So you can imagine
[1:21] this is kind of like the image of your
[1:23] the teachers of your students at the
[1:25] beginning of the year. Right?
[1:32] >> [snorts]
[1:33] >> You can imagine what I what I have shown
[1:35] this picture to teachers, it's exactly
[1:38] the same reaction. They say, "I just
[1:41] >> [laughter]
[1:41] >> that represents me."
[1:43] That's exactly what happens and most of
[1:45] them tell me it's you we don't have to
[1:47] wait until the end of the year to be
[1:50] feeling this way.
[1:51] Uh teacher teaching is a really hard
[1:54] profession.
[1:56] And what research has shown that
[1:58] teachers, um,
[1:59] daily stress is even similar to that of
[2:02] healthcare professionals.
[2:04] Um, and not only that, not only we know
[2:07] that teaching is one of the most
[2:09] stressful professions in the world, but
[2:11] it's also contagious.
[2:13] And there is research that has shown
[2:15] that, uh, in classrooms where teachers
[2:18] reported burnout, um, the students also
[2:21] had higher morning cortisol levels,
[2:23] which is a stress hormone one way one
[2:26] that we can physiological
[2:29] physiologically, um,
[2:30] measure stress.
[2:32] So, we know that, uh, a burnt-out
[2:36] teacher affects, um,
[2:38] the the way that, uh, our students, our
[2:41] children are feeling in school. So, we
[2:43] need to really understand what's going
[2:45] on with teachers' well-being, how on
[2:48] and, uh, and one of course one of the
[2:50] reasons why it matters is that our
[2:52] students' well-being and learning
[2:54] outcomes,
[2:55] um, has been well related to teachers'
[2:58] well-being. And there's a ton of, uh,
[3:01] academic studies that have shown these.
[3:03] More recently, a
[3:04] literature review by, uh, Balint and her
[3:06] colleagues have, uh, shown that this is
[3:09] the case.
[3:11] And we need to think about our teachers.
[3:12] I think we all have experienced this
[3:14] image before, although we ignore it
[3:17] recently when we get into a plane, but
[3:18] everybody Every flight flight attendant
[3:20] is telling us, you know, "Please use
[3:22] your mask your
[3:24] oxygen mask before you help others." And
[3:26] that is exactly the case It's exactly
[3:28] exactly the case for teachers and also
[3:30] for all of us who, uh, who care about
[3:33] others. And it doesn't have to be a
[3:34] student, it can be It can be, uh, a
[3:37] child, it can be a parent, it can be,
[3:40] uh, relative who is, uh, who's ill.
[3:43] We really need We want to take care of
[3:45] other people, we really need to take
[3:47] care first of us,
[3:48] about us.
[3:50] And, uh, so,
[3:52] and we just need to take care about our
[3:54] teachers because they're human beings.
[3:56] It's not just because
[3:57] um
[3:58] they're the our our children's students.
[4:00] It's they're not they're they are an end
[4:03] in itself. in themselves. So we need to
[4:06] take care of them because they deserve
[4:09] um a happy life.
[4:11] So uh what I'm going to be sharing it to
[4:14] you with you in terms of research is a
[4:16] national uh survey that we did in
[4:18] Colombia of teacher well-being in 2025.
[4:21] We're fortunate enough to get a grant
[4:23] from USAID, which doesn't exist anymore,
[4:26] unfortunately, but
[4:28] uh we were able to get it right before
[4:30] it disappeared.
[4:32] Um they
[4:34] um funded a multinational study with
[4:36] four different countries, developing
[4:37] countries, and Colombia was included
[4:39] there there.
[4:40] Where we started asking teachers uh
[4:44] about uh about what well-being meant to
[4:47] them, trying to build um
[4:50] measurement instruments in each one of
[4:52] these countries that were contextualized
[4:54] for the way that the teachers understood
[4:56] their own well-being.
[4:58] Um and when we um so we basically
[5:01] collected this data and the voices of
[5:03] the teachers and we created a
[5:05] questionnaire to measure teacher
[5:07] well-being.
[5:08] Um when we um
[5:10] disseminated the
[5:12] uh the instrument that we built, uh
[5:14] thankfully, well, some of the
[5:16] stakeholders were there and the Ministry
[5:17] of Education was there, the leaders that
[5:19] work with teacher well-being in the
[5:20] Ministry of Education were there. And
[5:22] they were interested in using this
[5:24] instrument to
[5:26] um to understand what was going on with
[5:27] the teachers at a national level and
[5:29] build the well-being programs based on
[5:32] this information. So in January 2025,
[5:36] which is the beginning of school public
[5:37] schools in Colombia, they
[5:39] uh collected the data with the
[5:41] instrument that we had built and they
[5:42] shared the data with us. So uh we were
[5:46] able to collect data from over 47,000
[5:49] student public school teachers thanks to
[5:52] that collaboration with with the
[5:54] Ministry of Education. And I want to
[5:55] show you some of the analysis and
[5:58] results that we had from that
[6:00] study.
[6:01] So, first of course, we wanted to ask
[6:03] teachers about how they were doing. And
[6:05] we asked them whether they had had the
[6:06] intention to leave the profession
[6:09] in the last year. And remember this was
[6:11] January. This was even before the
[6:13] students were in the school. This is the
[6:15] We call it the institutional week
[6:18] where they get together at school, they
[6:19] get training, they get everything
[6:22] planned and prepared to start the
[6:24] school. So, they're not supposed to be
[6:27] that much stressed by then. But, at
[6:29] least 40% of the teachers said that they
[6:31] were maybe considering or definitely
[6:35] considering leaving the profession at
[6:37] the beginning of the year. Can you
[6:38] imagine from this sample, it's We're
[6:40] talking about over 6,000 teachers that
[6:43] were seriously considering their
[6:44] profession.
[6:46] And we also asked uh some questions
[6:48] about emotional exhaus- exhaustion,
[6:50] which is one of the indicators of
[6:52] teachers' burnout.
[6:54] Uh in general, occupational burnout. So,
[6:56] you can see there that well, I asked We
[6:59] asked teachers, "Do they Do you feel
[7:00] emotionally drained, exhausted at work,
[7:04] overwhelmed at work?"
[7:06] And between 22 and 30% of the teachers
[7:08] were saying yes. Um I completely agree
[7:12] or partially partially agree with these
[7:13] statements.
[7:14] So, so and and again, this was the
[7:17] beginning of the year. They hadn't They
[7:18] didn't have the the their students in
[7:20] the classrooms.
[7:21] So, it's it's actually a problem uh as
[7:24] you can see that we need to address.
[7:27] So, when you think about teacher
[7:29] well-being, you can think of
[7:30] occupational well-being, but also
[7:32] non-occupational strain. Um and we the
[7:35] way we
[7:36] uh developed this instrument
[7:39] was looking at the two sides of the of
[7:42] this of the coin boy both well-being
[7:45] um by looking at job satisfaction,
[7:47] teaching self-efficacy, and sense of
[7:48] purpose. And remember this is these are
[7:51] the the the elements of the job
[7:53] well-being that we're able to capture
[7:54] from their own voices at the beginning
[7:56] of the study.
[7:57] And occupational strain we basically
[8:01] uh we're looking at two elements of it.
[8:03] So, teachers'
[8:04] uh perception of their own stress and
[8:06] emotional exhaustion. And I just gave
[8:08] you an example of how we addressed um
[8:11] that that side of well-being. And in
[8:14] this what I'm going to be sharing today
[8:15] I'm going to be focusing on the on
[8:17] occupational strain.
[8:19] So, we used uh the job demands resources
[8:22] model, which is this is a psychological
[8:24] theory
[8:25] theoretical model uh that comes from
[8:27] organizational psychology, which
[8:29] basically says
[8:30] uh we have and this is not just just
[8:32] teachers, we all experience this. We
[8:35] have job demands that cost us energy and
[8:37] investment in effort
[8:39] uh that include uh for example,
[8:41] workload, time pressure,
[8:44] uh increasing responsibilities in our
[8:45] jobs.
[8:46] Uh but we also have resources to, you
[8:49] know,
[8:50] face those demands uh that gives us
[8:53] energy to keep working and doing what we
[8:55] do in in our jobs. So, we might have
[8:57] external resources such as
[9:00] positive leaderships, um positive
[9:02] relationships with colleagues,
[9:04] recognition from the community where we
[9:06] work with.
[9:07] Um but also personal resources and this
[9:10] could be uh in the form of
[9:11] self-regulation, so positive social
[9:13] relationships, and of course
[9:15] contemplative practices such as
[9:17] self-compassion and gratitude.
[9:19] So, what what what we wanted to look at
[9:21] is whether those resources help buffer
[9:25] uh help buffer the the the job demands
[9:28] and in in in reducing the possible
[9:32] negative effect that we could uh find
[9:34] from job demands to on on the on
[9:36] occupational strain.
[9:39] So, uh in this study, specifically what
[9:41] we were looking at is um
[9:44] occupational strain was our dependent
[9:46] variable or the variable that we wanted
[9:47] to focus on. Um we had job demands and
[9:52] basically as a specifically I'm going to
[9:55] focus on workload. And you will see
[9:57] there um some examples of the items that
[9:59] we used at the teachers were responding
[10:02] to uh to measure these
[10:04] um these variables.
[10:06] And then we had personal resources.
[10:08] Particularly, we measured a set of
[10:10] different resources including other
[10:12] social and emotional skills, but now I'm
[10:14] going to focus on self-compassion and
[10:15] gratitude.
[10:17] And we wanted to see not only if those
[10:19] personal resources predict or have a
[10:21] relationship with occupational stress,
[10:24] uh of course hypothesizing that more
[10:26] personal resources will will be
[10:28] associated with uh less occupational
[10:30] stress, but also to see if personal
[10:32] resources could buffer or mitigate
[10:35] negative effect between job demands and
[10:37] occupational strain.
[10:41] And uh here are some examples and the
[10:45] definitions of self-compassion and
[10:46] gratitude and also the examples of the
[10:48] types of items that we used.
[10:49] Self-compassion we uh was based on the
[10:52] concept by Kristin Neff. Uh kindness
[10:55] towards our oneself, uh coming
[10:57] recognizing our common humanity and
[10:59] being mindful mindful of our of our
[11:02] difficult difficulties.
[11:05] Uh so we asked uh particularly the
[11:08] kindness part of this concept. Uh so for
[11:10] example, when I make a mistake, I try to
[11:12] see my failures as part of the human
[11:14] condition. When something painful
[11:16] happens, I try I try to make a balanced
[11:18] view of the situation.
[11:20] In terms of gratitude, we used an
[11:22] adapted definition of McCullough. So
[11:25] noticing and appreciating the good
[11:27] things in our life. And uh teachers um
[11:30] answered to
[11:32] items such as I took a few minutes in
[11:35] the in the past week to acknowledge the
[11:37] good things I have in my life, and I
[11:39] remind myself of benefits I have
[11:40] received in life.
[11:43] So, the first finding that I want to
[11:44] share is this. Uh, this is the direct
[11:47] effect of workload on occupational
[11:49] strain. And what you have And what you
[11:52] see there, the 0.69 coefficient is a
[11:54] coefficient is a correlation coefficient
[11:57] uh that goes from zero to one. And the
[11:59] higher it is, the stronger the
[12:01] relationship. Now, in social sciences
[12:03] and psychology, finding a correlation of
[12:05] 0.69 is really high. It's very It's very
[12:09] um
[12:10] uh
[12:11] um frequent to find such a strong
[12:13] correlation. And also, what you find at
[12:16] the right side is the effect size. So,
[12:18] what is the percentage of the
[12:19] variability of occupational strain that
[12:22] is explained by workload? And you can
[12:23] see it's 49. And you can interpret that
[12:26] that as a percentage. 49% A percent of
[12:29] the occupational strain is explained
[12:31] right by workload. So, it's a very
[12:32] strong prediction. Having um more work
[12:36] than I than I feel that I can do in a in
[12:38] a day predicts uh predicts my burnout
[12:40] and my stress.
[12:43] Now, when including self-compassion in
[12:45] this model, uh you can you can see also
[12:48] the coefficients there. So, 64 So, it's
[12:51] 64 0.64 for workload is pretty similar
[12:54] what to what we just looked.
[12:56] Uh and when you see self-compassion, the
[12:58] coefficient there is minus 0.61 uh 16.
[13:02] So, um
[13:04] the minus the minus sign, it just means
[13:06] that the higher self-compassion, the
[13:08] lower occupational strain. But you
[13:10] compare the absolute value of the You
[13:13] can compare the absolute value of the
[13:14] two of the two uh predictors here, and
[13:17] you can see that self-compassion has a
[13:18] much less weight in predicting
[13:21] occupational strain.
[13:23] Uh when you see how much proportion of
[13:25] the variance of occupational strain is
[13:27] predicted as 0.52, which mean that which
[13:30] means that self-compassion is adding an
[13:32] additional 6% of
[13:35] uh variance that's explained from
[13:37] occupational strain. So, still workload
[13:39] seems to be a much stronger predictor of
[13:42] occupational strain.
[13:43] And something very very similar happens
[13:45] to gratitude.
[13:47] So, you will see the coefficient there
[13:49] is minus 0.14. So, again, the higher the
[13:52] gratitude practices, the
[13:54] the lower the occupational strain.
[13:56] Uh and gratitude adds up uh 4% of
[14:01] of the prediction of the variance of
[14:02] occupational strain. So, it's
[14:04] significant. It's statistically
[14:06] significant. Basically, that means that
[14:08] that coefficient is different from zero.
[14:10] It doesn't mean that it's it's big.
[14:13] Uh the effect size is is what we're
[14:15] interested in. That is a 4%. So, it's a
[14:18] rather small
[14:19] uh it's a
[14:20] small to moderate
[14:22] um effect size for these two practices.
[14:26] Um when looking at the buffering effect,
[14:28] so basically, as I mentioned before, uh
[14:30] we were looking at the direct effect of
[14:32] job demands on occupational strain and
[14:35] how personal resources might mitigate
[14:37] that really strong relationship between
[14:39] workload and occupational strain. And
[14:41] when we look at those results, the
[14:43] effect was significant,
[14:45] uh statistically significant. So, the
[14:48] relationship looked like this.
[14:50] So, although again, it's
[14:52] statistically significant, the effect is
[14:54] small to moderate. So, you what what you
[14:56] see here on the x-axis is the uh levels
[15:01] of workload.
[15:02] So, you will see So, and on the y-axis,
[15:05] you'll find occupational strain. Strain,
[15:08] and that slope
[15:09] what basically means is that the higher
[15:12] the workload, the higher the
[15:13] occupational strain.
[15:15] But, in the
[15:17] um
[15:18] let's say brownish line, you'll find
[15:20] people who are low in self-compassion,
[15:23] and the green line they are high in
[15:25] self-compassion and you will see that
[15:27] when the the higher the workload this
[15:30] difference between the relationship
[15:32] between workload and occupational strain
[15:36] is bigger
[15:37] compared to when the workload is low.
[15:40] So it means that self-compassion
[15:43] actually helps
[15:44] teachers feeling less strain than
[15:49] than those who were not
[15:51] self-compassionate with with themselves.
[15:54] Something pretty similar happens with
[15:55] gratitude. So the difference here
[15:59] in occupational strain for
[16:02] for teachers who are perceiving higher
[16:04] higher workload is bigger than what when
[16:07] the workload is low is low.
[16:09] Which means that basically
[16:12] practicing gratitude helps decreasing
[16:15] that strong relationship that the air is
[16:18] that there is with high workload with
[16:20] the workload and occupational strain.
[16:22] But still you'll see the positive
[16:24] relationship in both of those lines. So
[16:26] workload doesn't doesn't lose its power.
[16:29] It's just it just increases a little bit
[16:31] with the practice.
[16:33] So the conclusion here is that those
[16:35] inner resources help lower those lines
[16:39] but they don't flatten the slope or
[16:41] disappear that relationship. So
[16:43] self-compassion self-compassion and
[16:46] gratitude help teachers suffer less
[16:47] under high job demand conditions.
[16:50] But the slope is mainly shaped by work
[16:53] conditions. It's still
[16:55] mainly or by shaped by working working
[16:57] conditions.
[16:58] And it seems that no amount of inner
[17:00] practice alone can pay that debt that we
[17:04] have particularly with teachers and we
[17:06] need to think about who decides on
[17:08] teachers demands particularly on
[17:10] workload and probably the strategy that
[17:13] we will have
[17:15] to think about in education in education
[17:16] systems is how to is a double strategy
[17:19] for thinking about how to both reduce
[17:22] the excessive demands on teachers and at
[17:24] the same time promote the development of
[17:26] their own personal resources. For
[17:28] example, uh by way of doing
[17:31] contemplative practices training.
[17:34] Now, the story is not that
[17:38] sad at all. I'm going to say if it's not
[17:40] enough of the personal resources. We've
[17:41] done some research
[17:43] on on also looking at the positive side
[17:45] of teacher well-being. I just wanted to
[17:46] share with you very quickly some all the
[17:49] analysis that we did looking at the
[17:51] interaction between school climate and
[17:54] social and emotional skills.
[17:56] So, basically what we did here is that
[17:57] in we um
[18:00] not only looked at self-compassion and
[18:02] gratitude, but we look at them in the
[18:04] conjunction with other social emotional
[18:06] skills as such as stress management,
[18:08] assertiveness,
[18:10] um regulation of anger.
[18:14] I can mindfulness uh interpersonal
[18:16] mindfulness. What So, and when you look
[18:18] at the complexity of the social
[18:20] emotional skills, so these contemplative
[18:23] practices in addition to other social
[18:25] emotional skills, there's a more
[18:27] promising
[18:29] result.
[18:30] Here are those relationships. So, you
[18:32] will see that
[18:35] uh and and in the x y axis and in the x
[18:37] axis you will find the school climate.
[18:39] So, positive school climate to the
[18:41] right, negative school climate to the
[18:43] left. And you will have teacher
[18:44] well-being here measured again on the
[18:47] positive side of it. So, self-efficacy,
[18:51] um
[18:52] job satisfaction,
[18:54] and sense of purpose.
[18:56] And you And what it we found that it was
[18:58] so interesting it's that when the school
[19:01] climate's positive for for teachers,
[19:03] actually social and emotional skills are
[19:06] not making such a difference. It's
[19:07] basically the same for all of them in
[19:09] terms of the teacher well-being.
[19:11] But what when they're living the school
[19:13] climates that are negative in terms of
[19:17] not so positive leadership relationships
[19:19] or not so positive relationships with
[19:21] their colleagues, for example,
[19:23] then if they make a difference. So,
[19:25] having social emotional skills makes a
[19:27] difference and those who are even though
[19:28] they're in negative school climates,
[19:32] uh having these social emotional skills
[19:34] are making a difference and are helping
[19:37] them feel more
[19:38] satisfied,
[19:40] uh self-efficacious, and have a
[19:43] greater sense of purpose.
[19:45] So, just to finalize, I just want to
[19:48] notice that of course this studies uh
[19:50] these studies have a
[19:52] important strengths. This is a large
[19:54] national sample of public school
[19:56] teachers, so we can make good inferences
[19:59] of of what's going on with our teachers.
[20:01] We tried to account for measurement
[20:03] error by doing some latent models,
[20:06] um
[20:07] which is something I didn't explain.
[20:08] It's just a just believe me. It was
[20:11] better than just
[20:12] >> [laughter]
[20:13] >> not doing that.
[20:14] Uh there was a consistent pattern with
[20:16] the role of the contemplative practices.
[20:18] And in terms of limitations, it's
[20:20] important to say that this is
[20:21] correlational data. We just took one
[20:23] picture of the data, and we know that
[20:24] these are correlated. What we cannot say
[20:27] one thing caused the other. So, we don't
[20:29] know if practicing gratitude uh makes
[20:31] people feel more uh stressed strained,
[20:34] or is it because I'm stressed that I'm
[20:36] looking for more gratitude practices,
[20:38] for example? Uh these are This is just
[20:41] self-reports, so we have a bias there.
[20:43] And again, there were small effect sizes
[20:46] of the buffering effects.
[20:48] Um and I just want to Well, I wanted to
[20:52] say about where I'm going to go to next,
[20:54] but my I think I think my time is up. I
[20:56] just wanted to recognize again the
[20:58] importance of taking care of our
[21:00] teachers, those who care about our
[21:02] children.
[21:04] Uh and we really need to think about
[21:05] ways uh as parents, as educational
[21:09] leaders uh
[21:10] on how to promote the emotional
[21:12] well-being of of the teachers both from
[21:15] the inner part practice and the
[21:16] collective responsibility.
[21:18] Thank you very much.
