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Stress and Release: Case Studiesof Teacher Resilience Followinga Mindfulness-Based Intervention

DEBORAH L. SCHUSSLERPennsylvania State University

ANNA DEWEESEFuller Psychological and Family Services, Pasadena, CA

DAMIRA RASHEEDCity University of New York

ANTHONY DEMAUROUniversity of Virginia

JOSHUA BROWNFordham University

MARK GREENBERGPennsylvania State University

PATRICIA A. JENNINGSUniversity of Virginia

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This qualitative collective case study investigates elementary teachers’ experiencewith stress and the mechanisms of change related to developing resilience fol-lowing a mindfulness-based intervention, Cultivating Awareness and Resiliencein Education (CARE). Results suggest that the amount of stress teachers expe-rience is less important than how they conceptualize their stress. Teachers whodeveloped resilience exercised mindful awareness and nonreactivity coupled witha healthy distress tolerance and sense of efficacy.Other protective factors includedcommunity support, self-care, and sustained use of practices focused on emotionregulation. Combined, these capacities enabled teachers to respond more com-passionately to their students. Implications for professional development that fos-ters teachers’ resilience are discussed.

nically published September 13, 2018

an Journal of Education 125 (November 2018)8 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.744/2018/12501-0001$10.00

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Attention to teacher stress has increased in recent years (Greenberg, Brown,and Abenavoli 2016; Richards 2012), with growing acknowledgment that theworking environments within which teachers operate are fraught with increas-ingly challengingandoftenunreasonable expectations, especially in urban schools(Brunetti 2006; Johnson et al. 2012). Challenges may include but are not limited

DEBORAH L. SCHUSSLER is an associate professor of educational leadership,faculty affiliate of the Prevention Research Center, and faculty affiliate of theRock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania State University. Her research exploreshow schools function as organizations to meet the social and moral develop-ment of learners and how teachers acquire the necessary dispositions to meetthe needs of all learners. ANNA DEWEESE is currently the office manager atFuller Psychological and Family Services and previously served as the inter-vention coordinator at Fordham University for the CARE for Teachers NYCproject. She also consults with mindfulness-based nonprofit organizations andsupports the integration of mindfulness practices into areas such as educationand mental health care. DAMIRA RASHEED is a research associate in the De-partment of Psychology at Fordham University and a doctoral candidate inquantitative methods in educational and psychological research in the Depart-ment of Educational Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City Universityof New York. Her research focuses on disparities in academic achievementamong racial/ethnic minorities and identification of protective factors to pro-mote positive educational and social-emotional outcomes for children in school.ANTHONY DEMAURO is an instructor of education at the University of Vir-ginia’s Curry School of Education. Anthony’s research focuses on how teachers’personal mindfulness practice influences their professional teaching practicesuch as the ability to build relationships with students, manage their classrooms,andmeet students’needs. JOSHUABROWN is an associate professor and directorof the applied developmental psychology doctoral training program in the De-partment of Psychology at Fordham University. His research focuses on the de-velopment and evaluation of interventions with schools and teachers and inclassroom settings to promote the social-emotional and academic success ofchildren from diverse backgrounds and the well-being of the adult professionalswho work with them on a daily basis. MARK GREENBERG holds the BennettEndowed Chair in Prevention Research at Pennsylvania State University. He isthe author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on the effects of pre-vention of mental health concerns and the promotion of well-being. PATRICIAA.JENNINGS is an associate professor of education at theCurry School of Educationat the University of Virginia. She is an internationally recognized leader in thefields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education with a spe-cific emphasis on teacher stress and how it affects the social and emotional con-text of the classroom.

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to large class sizes (Horng 2009), increasing numbers of students experiencingfood insecurity (Fiese et al. 2011), violence in communities (Maring and Kob-linsky 2013), major curricular changes like the Common Core that are not ac-companied with adequate resources or professional development (Ajayi 2016),and the proliferation of value-added measures and other teacher-evaluationsystems that define effective teaching using student test scores (Hanushek andRivkin 2006; Jacob 2007). It is well documented that chronic teacher stress resultsin either reduced effectiveness or “burnout” ( Jennings and Greenberg 2009;MacDonald and Shirley 2009), consisting of personal exhaustion, cynicism, anddecreased sense of efficacy (Maslach et al. 2001).A number of environmental conditions as well as personal attributes put

teachers at risk of chronic stress leading to burnout. Environmental risk factorsinclude lack of administrative support, classroom management issues, a schoolculture marked by lack of trust, and unsupportive relationships with colleagues(Gibbs and Miller 2014; Gu and Day 2007; Johnson et al. 2012). Personal at-tributes that may leave teachers more susceptible to burnout include lack of self-efficacy, values or beliefs that run contrary to school mandates, and lack of con-fidence in one’s own capacity to teach all students (Hollins and Guzman 2005;MacDonald and Shirley 2009). Teachers experience intense stress when theysense they have been stripped of their own moral compass and must choose be-tween complying with school mandates and acting based on their own discern-ment of how best to serve their students’ needs (Sanger and Osguthorpe 2013;Schussler and Murrell 2016).In addition to understanding what puts teachers at risk of burnout, it is

critical to know what protects them from these stressors, in essence what factorspromote resilience. We define resilience as the phenomenon that occurs whenteachers experience stress but continue to maintain a sense of purpose or abilityto flourish. Resilience is a construct that has been well researched with at-riskchildren and youth and is supported with empirically validated conceptualframeworks (see Kumpfer 1999; Luthar et al. 2000). However, far less researchhas examined resilience among teachers. A few studies apply resilience frame-works developed from researching at-risk children and youth to understandinghow teachers manage challenges and counteract stressors inherent in their jobs(Doney 2013; Schelvis et al. 2014). However, themechanisms by which teachersdevelop and sustain resilience remain to be understood. Furthermore, there is adearth of empirical research examining the impact of interventions on teachers’resilience (Beltman et al. 2011; Griffiths 2014).Recently, mindfulness-based professional development programs geared to-

ward educators have emerged as a means to help teachers develop resilience tostress and improve their overall well-being. These include Comprehensive Ap-proach to Learning Mindfulness (CALM), Stress Management and RelaxationTechniques (SMART), and Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education

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(CARE). A nascent research base has begun to examine the impact of some ofthese programs (Benn et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2016; Jennings et al. 2013). Themajority of this research has been primarily quantitative, focusing on pre/postchanges or cross-sectional analyses in preselected outcomes, such as physicalsymptoms (Harris et al. 2016; Jennings et al. 2013), emotion regulation (Abe-navoli et al. 2013; Benn et al. 2012), mindful awareness ( Jennings et al. 2013;Jennings et al. 2011), and compassion (Benn et al. 2012; Roeser et al. 2013). Fewstudies explore how teachers experienced these changes, why outcomes changedin the ways they did, and how they relate to teachers’ reported feelings of stress.In addition, few studies examine how a mindfulness-based intervention mightsupport teachers’ resilience by building capacity to manage adverse situations(Beltman et al. 2011) and to maintain a sense of well-being (Gibbs and Miller2014; Tait 2008).The purpose of this article is to investigate the development of teacher resil-

ience after teachers receive a mindfulness-based intervention (CARE). Couchedin a larger efficacy study of 224 elementary teachers (see Jennings et al. 2017),we qualitatively examined teachers’ experiences with stress and themechanismsof change related to resilience through a collective case study of three purpo-sively selected teachers: one who articulated positive trends toward developingresilience, one who articulated moderate results, and one who articulated littlechange. Our investigation also details contextual factors surrounding teachers’experiences with occupational stress to situate the analysis of how mindfulnessaffected their resilience.

Overview of Relevant Literature

A vast literature on teacher stress and burnout exists, including a plethora ofinformation about the problematic rates of retention caused by a variety ofstressors (Borman and Dowling 2008; Myung et al. 2013; Skaalvik and Skaal-vik 2010). It can be argued that teaching falls into the category of jobs that“involve high demands and low control” and therefore “present the greatestrisk for health, particularly when combined with little support” (Griffiths 2014,658). Because the CARE program is a mindfulness-based intervention de-signed to foster teachers’ resilience, we review the extant research in two areas:(1) teacher resilience and (2) mindfulness-based interventions for teachers.

Teacher Resilience

Teacher resilience lacks a widely agreed-upon definition (Beltman et al. 2011;Schelvis et al. 2014). In their development of a teacher and school resilience



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model to help the Netherlands face challenges in its schools, Schelvis et al.(2014) noted that the word “resilience” does not exist in Dutch but cited threewords that capture comparable ideas, including wendbaarheid (adapting whennecessary), veerkracht (bouncing back quickly from challenges), and weerbaarheid

(maintaining confidence when change occurs). The idea of the individual adapt-ing or responding productively to environmental changes is evident throughoutthe teacher resilience literature, utilizing definitions of resilience that are eitherexplicit (Brunetti 2006; Gu andDay 2007; Tait 2008) or implicit (Griffiths 2014;Howard and Johnson 2004). Brunetti (2006), for example, defines teacher re-silience as “a quality that enables teachers to maintain their commitment toteaching despite challenging conditions and recurring setbacks” (813). Per-severing can also take the form of recovering, as in the definition of resilienceused by Gu and Day (2007): “capacity to continue to ‘bounce back’, to recoverstrengths or spirit quickly and efficiently in the face of adversity” (1302).In the prevention science literature, resilience has been defined as an indi-

vidual’s ability to overcome potential negative trajectories and function ade-quately despite the presence of risk and/or trauma (Fergus and Zimmerman2005; Masten 2011). Resilience research, then, investigates mechanisms thatpromote or inhibit resilience rather than just examining indicators of risk (Saltz-man et al. 2011). Resilience can either involve how the individual avoids neg-ative outcomes or realizes positive outcomes (Fergus and Zimmerman 2005),which may take the form of looking at “successful adaptation” (Perkins andBorden 2003, 384) in spite of inordinate adversity. Protective or “promotive”factors must be present for an individual to successfully adapt despite the pres-ence of risk factors. Fergus and Zimmerman (2005) divide promotive factorsinto two distinct groups: (1) assets—qualities or traits occurring from within theindividual—and (2) resources—supports that originate from the environment.When risk factors are present, the probability of a negative outcome variesgreatly depending on the protective factors present (Perkins and Borden 2003).In this study we draw from Perkins and Borden’s (2003) framework, concep-tualizing resilience as the phenomenon that occurs when teachers experiencestress but possess promotive assets that allow them to maintain their sense ofpurpose.Literature on teacher resilience adopts a similar approach to the well-

established frameworks on resilience of at-risk children and youth by discussingrisk and protective factors that reside both in the environment and the indi-vidual. Howard and Johnson (2004) claim that teachers can learn skills thatnurture their own resilience. One of the individual protective factors frequentlynoted for improving teacher resilience is efficacy (Doney 2013; Gu and Day2007, Howard and Johnson 2004; Tait 2008). Teachers who are more effica-cious—who have a greater sense of competence, especially in areas such as effec-tive lesson planning and classroom management (Howard and Johnson 2004;

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Richards et al. 2014)—are more likely to overcome adversity. Observations andbeliefs about what they are already capable of doing affect their beliefs whenadverse events occur. According to Gibbs and Miller (2014), “Teachers who canbe helped to demonstrate they can produce the outcomes they need may havea greater belief that such effects can be reproduced in the future” (612). Fur-thermore, efficacy not only predicts resilience but also can build resilience (Guand Day 2007) by reinforcing itself, similar to Frederickson’s (2004) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion. In the broaden-and-build theory, positiveemotions, such as joy and interest, broaden the psychological mind-set, whatFrederickson calls the “thought-action repertoire” (1369), and help build per-sonal resources, which may be needed when one encounters stressful situations.Similarly, efficacy helps build the psychological reserve to enable one’s resil-ience during stressful incidents.Other individual protective factors include becoming less emotionally reac-

tive when facing challenging situations (Sharp and Jennings 2016) and learningstrategies of self-care (Beltman et al. 2011; Schussler et al. 2016). Howard andJohnson (2004) suggest that mentors working with new teachers should help themlearn “strategies of de-personalizing stressful incidents” (415). Depersonalizingsimply entails not taking things personally. The stressful incidents will alwaysexist, but educators can alter the way they view such incidents; this approach isalso referred to as “reappraisal” (Gross and John 2003; Montgomery and Rupp2005).Environmental factors that promote teacher resilience are also suggested

throughout the literature. Beltman et al. (2011) note that administrative supportwas the most highly studied environmental protective factor, with 50% morestudies addressing this issue than mentoring and peer support, which were tiedfor second as themost studied environmental protective factors. School-supportprotective factors include creating positive experiences to increase teachers’mastery and efficacy (Gibbs and Miller 2014; Gu and Day 2007), creating de-velopment opportunities for teachers (Griffiths 2014), having supportive per-sonal relationships between teachers and administrators (Brunetti 2006; Gibbsand Miller 2014; Howard and Johnson 2004), and teaching in a school with astrong institutional mission that creates a feeling of support among faculty (Guand Day 2007). Support from colleagues and a sense of support networks withinthe school culture also serve as vital protective factors for teachers (Doney 2013;Howard and Johnson 2004; Tait 2008).In sum, resilience encompasses both environmental and individual protective

factors that may differ depending on the individual teacher, but it likely includesan individual sense of efficacy and the existence of supportive relationships andmission-driven institutional structures (Gibbs and Miller 2014; Gu and Day2007; Tait 2008).



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Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Teachers

Research on mindfulness-based programs for teachers (CALM, SMART, andother adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction [MBSR] programs) offerssome insights into potential protective factors that seem to help teachers buildtheir resilience. These factors include awareness (physical, cognitive, emotional),emotion regulation, and compassion, including self-compassion.CALMinvolvesyoga, somatic breathing, intention setting, and caring practices (Harris et al.2016); participating educators can attend up to 4 times a week for 20 minutesbefore school. SMART is based on Kabat-Zinn’s (1990) MBSR program withadditional content on forgiveness, emotion theory and regulation, and com-passion practices all geared toward teachers (Benn et al. 2012; Roeser et al.2013). Flook et al. (2010) and Frank et al. (2015) studied separate 8-weekMBSRprograms adapted for teachers.Results of these studies indicate that mindfulness-based interventions im-

proved teachers’ awareness, cognitively and/or physically (Abenavoli et al. 2013;Flook et al. 2013; Harris et al. 2016; Roeser et al. 2013). SMART and MBSRparticipants increased working memory and experienced greater awarenessof physical sensations and their physical surroundings (Benn et al. 2012; Flooket al. 2013; Roeser et al. 2013). CALM participants showed a decrease inreported daily physical symptoms, like headaches and stomachaches (Abenavoliet al. 2013; Harris et al. 2016), whereas MBSR participants experienced im-provements in sleep quality (Frank et al. 2015). In addition to awareness of theirphysical condition and physical surroundings, teachers who participated in amindfulness-based intervention seemed to gain increased awareness of theiremotions and heightened ability to regulate their emotions (Benn et al. 2012;Flook et al. 2013; Frank et al. 2015; Taylor et al. 2016). In fact, Flook et al.(2013) found a reciprocal effect among emotion regulation, burnout, and at-tention, whereby “an increase in self-reported non-reactivity was associatedwithreductions in both psychological symptoms and depersonalization and with in-creases in an objective measure of sustained attention” (189). Depersonalizationin Flook’s study is a component of burnout, described as “an unfeeling and im-personal response towards recipients of one’s care” (Maslach and Jackson 1981,101). In addition, teachers in SMART described greater awareness and controlof their “response to salient emotional triggers” (Benn et al. 2012, 1483). Teach-ers’ capacities for emotion regulation may relate to increased compassion forothers, although this causal link is not yet supported empirically (Benn et al.2012). The studies thatmeasured emotion regulation and self-compassion foundgains in positive directions for both (Flook et al. 2013; Frank et al. 2015; Roeseret al. 2013).

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Although studies of mindfulness-based interventions for teachers frequentlyinclude a measure of “efficacy,” these measures explore different aspects of ef-ficacy, including efficacy in emotion regulation (Benn et al. 2012; Frank et al.2015; Taylor et al. 2016), forgiveness (Taylor et al. 2016), and teaching (Bennet al. 2012; Harris et al. 2016). It can often be difficult to interpret these efficacyfindings, especially when viewed in conjunction with other findings, includingaspects of mindfulness. Frank et al. (2015) found, for example, that secondaryteachers who participated in MBSR reported greater efficacy in their ability toremain calm and focused on the present when dealing with stressors; however,the teachers did not report increased confidence in their capacity to acceptchallenging emotions. The researchers concluded that although the participantscould cognitively engage in the practice of mindfulness and feel confident in theirability to do so, they likely needed more practice to feel comfortable with thesubcomponent of acceptance. In contrast, Harris et al. (2016) found that teach-ers who participated in CALM reported gains in their distress tolerance, whichis their ability to withstand negative emotions, a construct that arguably is sim-ilar to mindful acceptance. Although CALM did not affect teachers’ cognitiveemotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal and expressive suppression ofemotion), Harris et al. concluded that participation “instead helped partici-pants to cope more effectively with negative emotions and distress” (151), whichlikely relates to their efficacy, although efficacy of emotion regulation was notdirectly measured. These nuances of how various mechanisms operate togetherillustrate the need for more in-depth analysis.The results of mindfulness-based studies for teachers should be taken some-

what cautiously, as the field is growing. In fact, a recent review notes that al-though outcomes tended to be positive, the quality of studies is “inconsistent,”with a lack of randomized controlled trials (Lomas et al. 2017). Small samplesizes plague a number of studies (e.g., Flook et al. 2013), and measures tend tofocus on mental health deficits (e.g., Harris et al. 2016) as opposed to work en-gagement or flourishing.

CARE for Teachers

CARE is a mindfulness-based professional development program that includesmindful awareness training, emotion skills instruction, and compassion prac-tices. It was developed to improve teachers’ awareness and well-being and toenhance classroom learning environments (see fig. 1). In a previous study ofCARE, quantitative results with a cohort of urban and suburban teachers ina small metropolitan area showed that, compared with teachers in the controlgroup, CARE teachers experienced significant improvements in general hurry,certain aspects of mindfulness like “observing” and “nonreactivity,” teaching



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efficacy, and physical symptoms ( Jennings et al. 2013). Findings from qualita-tive studies of this same population involved focus groups exploring teachers’awareness and mindful nonreactivity to emotional stressors (Schussler et al.2016). Increased self-awareness of their physical symptoms and typical emo-tional reactions facilitated teachers’ capacity to regulate their emotions, whichthey reported positively affected their relationships with colleagues, students,and family members. Efficacy did not emerge, although Schussler et al. (2016)hypothesized that “increased awareness and emotional regulation improvesteachers’ effectiveness”; therefore, when teachers were interviewed, they “de-scribed experiences that resulted from their increased efficacy but did not ex-plicitly attribute those experiences to greater efficacy” (139).A recent randomized controlled trial of the CARE intervention involved a

sample of 224 teachers in 36 urban elementary schools for an efficacy study (seeJennings et al. 2017). We hypothesized that, compared with controls, CAREteachers would show improvements in measures of adaptive emotion regula-tion, teaching efficacy, mindfulness, psychological distress, and physical distress.Adaptive emotion regulation refers to cognitive reappraisal and emotion sup-pression (Gross and John 2003). Teaching efficacy refers to teachers’ beliefs abouttheir capacity to positively affect aspects of students’ learning and engagement(Tschannen-Moran and Hoy 2001). Mindfulness involves being aware, non-judgmental, and emotionally nonreactive and then acting from that state ofmind (Baer et al. 2004). Psychological distress included teachers’ overall emo-

FIG. 1.—CARE logic model. Reprinted from Jennings et al. (2013).

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tional health, burnout, stress, and time pressure. Following a factor analysis, themain outcomes analyzed in the study by Jennings et al. (2017) included adap-tive emotion regulation, teaching efficacy, mindfulness, psychological distress,and time urgency. The results showed significant direct effects of the CAREintervention on four of these five factors. After 1 year, teachers showed higherlevels of adaptive emotion regulation and mindfulness and lower levels of psy-chological distress and time urgency on the quantitative measures. Unlike a pre-vious study ( Jennings et al. 2013), there was no effect on teaching efficacy. Inaddition, classroom observations by independent raters showed CARE teach-ers provided higher levels of emotional support and classroom organizationthan teachers in the control group ( Jennings et al. 2017).This article focuses on a qualitative analysis of a subsample of teachers from

this larger study. Analyzing case studies of individual participants with differ-ent experiences is an initial step in beginning to understand not only whetherparticipants demonstrated improvement across measures, as indicated in thequantitative data, but the context and nuance of whether and how those mea-sures synergize into teacher resilience.

Method

Participants

Qualitative data consisted of full interview transcripts from 21 participantsselected from the larger study after the collection of all quantitative data. Theself-identified racial/ethnic background of the full sample of 224 teachers was33% white, 31% Hispanic, 26% African American, 4% Asian American, and5%mixed background. The average age was 41 years, with the age range from22 to 73. Participants averaged 12.5 years of school teaching and were all at theelementary level. Participants gave active consent to participate in the study,in accordance with university and local department of education institutionalreview board procedures. Participants for the qualitative interviews were re-cruited from and demographically mirrored the full study sample. All teach-ers were invited to participate by indicating their willingness to participate ina 60- to 90-minute phone interview at a time of their convenience. Those whoagreed to an interview received a gift card to DonorsChoose. The 21 teachersparticipating in qualitative interviews completed all intervention activities andmeasures.As we coded the interviews, we noticed that the 21 teachers naturally sepa-

rated into three broad groups: those who articulated very positive changesacross a number of measures following CARE (np 6), those who experienced



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some positive changes (np 9), and those who did not express much change(np 6). Therefore, we chose to base our analysis on a “collective case study” forwhich the specific cases were selected “because it is believed that understandingthem will lead to better understanding, perhaps better theorizing, about a stilllarger collection of cases” (Stake 1998, 89). Our purpose was to understand thedevelopment of resilience; therefore, it was important to use maximum varia-tion sampling (Patton 1990) to select cases that provided an “intensive, holisticdescription and analysis of a single instance” (Merriam 1988, 21). We identifiedthe following three teachers (all proper names are pseudonyms) as typical casesfor these categories (McMillan 2004).Least positive: Taylor.—Taylor had been teaching 15 years, with 7 years at her

current school. On a scale of 1–5, with 5 being the highest, she ranked her stressrelated to students, the curriculum, and the administration all as 5. Like a fewothers, there was little to code in a number of major categories; furthermore,she demonstrated little evidence of using the practices learned in CARE outsideof the program.Moderately positive: Maria.—Maria had been teaching 10.5 years, almost en-

tirely at her current school. She taught for half a year at another school. Sheranked her stress as 2 for students and 3 for the curriculum and administration.Maria showed more evidence of nonreactivity (one aspect of mindfulness) andnoted quite a few practices she learned in CARE training.Most positive: Ariana.—Ariana had been teaching for 11 years, all at her cur-

rent school, the same school as Taylor. Ariana ranked her stress related to thestudents as 3, the curriculum as 1, and the administration as 3. Ariana’s tran-script provided a breadth of concepts requiring coding andmore depth in termsof what was being coded, especially regarding emotional awareness. She alsonoted more sustained practices and more sources of support, including the im-portance of conducting professional development in the community.

CARE Professional Development

CARE for Teachers Professional Development (CARE PD) aims to improveteachers’ social-emotional competence through a variety of pedagogical activ-ities: small- and large-group discussion, direct instruction,mindful exercises, andpersonal reflection. Activities are presented iteratively to reinforce concepts andskills. The program included 30 contact hours total, which took place in fourdaylong sessions over a 6-week period and a booster session that took place2months after the fourth session. Participants received a workbook and practiceCD to initiate their own personal practice beyond the program. They also re-ceived coaching calls on the phone.

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Interviews

We conducted individual interviews to contextualize teachers’ experience ofoccupational stress and to clarify the mechanisms of change that contribute toteachers’ development of resilience following CARE. Interviews were semi-structured and took place over the phone at a day and time that participantsagreed was convenient for their schedules. Interviews took place almost 1 yearafter the end of official CARE activities because we wanted to assess which skillsand concepts endured over time. The interviewers were a part of the researchteam; one conducted coaching calls for CARE PD.The interview protocol consisted of questions about what was most enjoyable

and most challenging about teaching, sources of stress both before and afterreceiving CARE PD and the extent to which they felt stressed by each, how theyhandle stressful situations currently and previously, the role that student andteacher emotions do play and should play in the classroom, why they partici-pated in CARE, how they would describe CARE to others, what was most andleast helpful about the program, whether there were any skills they learnedin CARE that they continued to use and how, whether they would participatein CARE again and why, and what kind of teacher they thought would mostbenefit from CARE. The protocol did not include specific questions about thefive factors in the quantitative study because individuals may feel social pressureto present themselves in a certain way or may struggle to accurately describepsychological constructs; however, they are adept at revealing these constructswhen they describe situations, especially critical incidents such as times of stress(Weiss 1994; Wilson 2002). Participants were encouraged to elaborate on theirresponses. Interviews were taped and transcribed in their entirety. All identi-fying information was removed to maintain confidentiality.

Data Analysis

Our coding system was partially emergent and partially a priori (Stemler2004). We wanted participants’ descriptions of how they managed stress beforeand after the CARE training, so our coding system began with specific sourcesof stress: students, curriculum, administration, other school stressors, and non-school-related stressors. It became evident that some participants also describedsources of support, so we added this category. To understand resilience, in-cludingmanaging stress and enhancement of well-being, we carefully examinedhow participants described stressful events before and after CARE and themechanisms that facilitated or inhibited any changes. Consequently, the bulk ofour coding involved “mechanisms of change”—malleable factors that seemed



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to affect teachers’ resilience to stress: distress tolerance, mindfulness, physicalsymptoms, hurry/time pressure, efficacy, compassion/empathy, self-care. Our“mindfulness” code was defined with the subscales of the Five Facets of Mind-fulness Questionnaire (Baer et al. 2008), which includes description, observa-tion, acting with awareness, nonjudging inner experiences, and nonreactivityto inner experiences. Most mindfulness codes related to acting with awarenessand/or nonreactivity.The codes we used differed somewhat from the measures used in the quan-

titative study in an effort to most accurately capture the qualitative data. Forexample, based on the interview data, we included the following codes: (1) dis-tress tolerance, defined as the degree to which individuals are willing to withstandnegative emotions before pushing them away, trying to change them, or be-coming absorbed in them (Simons and Gaher 2005); (2) compassion/empathy,defined as “feeling for” or “feeling with” another person out of an interest forthe other’s well-being, specifically, “feelings, cognitions, and behaviors that arefocused on caring, concern, tenderness, and an orientation toward supporting,helping and understanding the other(s)” (Sprecher and Fehr 2005, 630); (3) self-care, defined as inward compassion—examples include teachers’ recognitionof the importance of taking care of themselves or purposeful actions to achievethat end. We also included codes to capture the frequency, nature, and contextof adopted practices. Through an iterative process, we developed and refined acodebook based on all codes. Unless otherwise noted, references to coding in-dicate the qualitative data only.After working through two interviews to establish our codebook and refine

our codes, four coders worked in pairs to code all 21 interviews using NVivo 10.Coding pairs coded individually, wrote memos, thenmet weekly, via telephone,to reach consensus. All four coders discussed issues that arose in the paireddiscussions, employing what Campbell et al. (2011) refer to as the “negotiatedagreement approach,” which makes sense for semistructured interviews withcomplex data where “generating new insights” (306) is the primary motive. Thecodebook was refined and ambiguities regarding the application of constructsto interview data were clarified throughout. Percentage of agreement was cal-culated at 97%, which is an acceptable threshold and was selected given thecomplexity of the data set and problems with standardizing the units of mean-ing (Campbell et al. 2011; Kurasaki 2000).Using NVivo 10, we conducted matrix analyses indicating prevalence of

codes across participants and categories.We ran two kinds of analyses: (1) codedunits and (2) “row percentage.”Because a coded unit could be a partial sentenceor an entire paragraph, we conducted row percentage analyses in conjunctionwith calculating the number of coded units because it takes the prevalence ofdata into account. These analyses helped highlight participants who discussedcertain categories more than others and also showed which codes tended to

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cluster together for particular participants. After selecting the 3 cases from the21, we examined the raw data coded within each cell of the matrices to betterunderstand how participants were describing their experiences of stress andmechanisms that affected their resilience.

Results

Results are divided into two broad categories: teachers’ sources of stress (seetable 1) and mechanisms of change (see table 2). Darker shadings representmore data within the subcategory, and lighter shadings indicate less. Narrativeaccounts throughout provide rich insight into the mechanisms underlying howteachers developed resilience following CARE PD.

Source of Stress

Given that Taylor labeled all three areas—students, curriculum, administra-tion—as causing the highest level of stress (5 on a 1–5 scale), one would thinkshe would have the most coded units in these areas. Interestingly, Ariana hadthe most total coded units for stressors, with the most in all categories except foradministration (see table 1). However, the ways that teachers describe thesestressors show marked differences. Although Ariana has 3 times as many codedunits for “sources of stress–students” as Maria, Ariana’s description of why sheis stressed extends beyond herself and her own well-being to a deep concernfor the well-being of her students. Ariana notes throughout her interview thatmany of her students have difficult home situations. Yet, she has high expec-tations, and her stress seems to result from a strong desire for students to meetthese expectations. When explaining how students cause her stress, Ariana said:

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I just feel this burden of wanting them to be successful, and it’s not aburden in a sense but I take it on myself even if they have terrible homelives. Even though, intellectually I know that I can’t force this kid to cometo school, intellectually I know that I can’t make this person have a betterparent, I don’t understand that in the moment. So my stress level, be-cause I take on the role of mother, I take on the role of, “You’re going todo well because it’s what you need to do,” and there’s no rationalizing inthat stressful moment with me.

Ariana’s description differs from Taylor’s description of how students cause herstress and why she gave it a 5: “Because it can go any kind of way. You have tothink about every situation. You have to think about the kid, you got to think


This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on October 23, 2018 20:16:52 PMbject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

This conteAll use subject to Univer

TABLE1

ComparisonofCasesacrossSourcesofStress

Cod

ingReference

Stud

ent

Curriculum

Adm

inistration

Other

Scho

olStressors

Outside

ofScho

olManagingStress

Outside

CARE

Sourcesof

Supp

ort

Num

berby

case:

Taylor

53

56

03

0Maria

32

24

01

1Ariana

94

313

15

3%

bycase:

Taylor

23.66

16.14

22.56

21.75

015.91

0Maria

32.16

17.39

20.3

18.21

05.45

6.49

Ariana

25.25

9.07

8.57

24.75

1.49

18.48

12.39

NOTE.—

Darkershadingrepresents

moredata

with

inthesubcategory,

andlighter

shadingindicatesless.

nt dosity o

wnf Ch

loaic

deago

d fro Pre

m 1ss T

32er

.17ms

4.2 and

54. C

159ond

onitio

Octns (

ober 23, 2018 20:16:52 PMhttp://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

This conAll use subject to Unive

TABLE2

ComparisonofCasesacrossMechanismsofChange

Cod

ing

Reference

Practice

Distress

Tolerance

Mindfulness

Internalizing

Physical

Symptom

sHurry

Tim

ePressure

Efficacy

Com

passion/

Empathy

Self-

Care

Com

mun

ityCollegiality

Num

berby

case:

Taylor

14

40

03

03

0Maria

95

100

15

62

3Ariana

52

134

56

511

9%

bycase:

Taylor

3.28

32.99

30.3

00

21.87

011.57

0Maria

19.09

16.6

28.62

01.45

12.11

13.27

2.05

5.46

Ariana

5.76

2.85

25.32

4.2

6.87

7.18

8.33

17.25

22.25

NOTE.—

Darkershadingrepresents

moredata

with

inthesubcategory,

andlighter

shadingindicatesless.

tent drsity

owof C

nloh

adicag

ed o P

fromress

13 Te

2.1rm

74.s an

254d C

.15on

9 odit

n Oion

ctobs (ht

er 23, 2018 20:16:52 PMtp://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

Schussler et al.

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about their parent, you got to think about another adult seeing it. Somethingmay happen and they may blame you, and next thing you know you got toworry about your job, or you got to worry about going to disciplinary. It’s just awhole lot of things that when a child is out of control, it can open up a wholebunch of different negative experiences.” In reference to a specific student, shesaid, “I just let him act the way he was acting and let administration handle it,because I didn’t know what to do. They don’t give us any kind of strategies todeal with children that have . . . basic behavior issues.” Both Taylor and Arianadiffered from Maria, whose comments mostly had to do with instances whereone student’s behaviors would “throw off the equilibrium” for both her and therest of the class.For Taylor, the focus was on herself and how she was affected by the actions

and behaviors of others. In contrast, Ariana was focused on others. This wasevident in Ariana’s description of other school stressors as well. Ariana agreedto assume the role of the lead science teacher for her school, which meant ratherthan having her own classroom of approximately 30 students, she assumedresponsibility for 400. She worried that she could not develop rapport to teachthem as effectively as she wanted. She also expressed concern for nontenuredteachers with the new teacher accountability policies in the state: “We didn’tknow how the system was going to work, how would that impact our jobs, howwould that impact tenure possibly for teachers.” Ariana already had tenure, sothese changes had less direct effect on her personally, yet she was worried forher colleagues.Teachers were not specifically asked about sources of support, although

Ariana noted a few throughout her interview. Her comments mostly focusedon how her administration serves as one of those sources of support. She notesthe “freedom” and “lack of micromanagement” as positives for her because shehad the flexibility and “encouragement” to try new things. In contrast, Taylorviewed the administration as “trying to catch you doing something” wrong andcommented about needing to leave that school. Taylor and Ariana worked inthe same school with the same administration, which means they likely eitherhad dissimilar experiences with administrators or they related to the adminis-tration very differently, with Ariana viewing the relationship as more supportiveand Taylor viewing the relationship as more antagonistic.

Mechanisms of Change

Mechanisms of change consist of the malleable, protective factors contributingto teachers’ resilience and any practices learned in CARE PD that supportedthis development. Although mindfulness was one of the most prominent out-comes for all three cases, as seen in the lower half of Table 2, the upper half of

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Table 2 shows that Ariana and Maria had 2.5 to 3 times as many coding ref-erences to mindfulness as Taylor. Many comments were classified as “nonre-activity,” although they were qualitatively different. Taylor’s comments seemedto center on getting out of situations. In describing how she handled a stressfulsituation with a colleague, she said it was “the straw that broke the camel’s backthat made me realize that I’m not going back to that school, no matter what.”She said CARE helped her be nonreactive: “I just kept my mouth quiet be-cause I learned not to be reactive, just to really control myself.” Yet, Taylor’snonreactivity may have embodied suppression more than purposeful redirec-tion of her emotions. In contrast, Maria describes nonreactivity as a means topause and then respond more appropriately rather than becoming inwardlyangry or resentful: “So when I get aggravated, or agitated by any type of sit-uation, instead of me just flying off the handle, I learned to take deep breaths,kind of relax before I respond. You know, do a little mini time-out for myself.”The mindfulness code by itself portrayed some interesting differences be-

tween the cases. During coding, however, we found it instructive to examinemindfulness, efficacy, and distress tolerance together, as key passages were of-ten multicoded. Furthermore, across participants, these codes interacted to re-veal qualitatively different phenomena. For example, although the efficacy codewas used across all three teachers, Taylor’s comments represented a lack ofefficacy, which related to her acceptance that some situations were problematic(mindfulness—acting with awareness) and nothing could be done (distress tol-erance). In describing a stressful situation with a student, Taylor said, “Therewas a little boy . . . that had some really emotional issues, and I tried to deal withit. I just let him just be, because, again, I didn’t want to react, and I just calledadministration and I just let the boy carry on and act the way that he was actingbecause I didn’t know how to handle him. The schools don’t really teach us howto deal with students that have these emotional problems.” When asked if shedealt with these kinds of situations the same or differently from before she re-ceived CARE training, she noted, “It’s different. I close my mouth. I don’t sayone word. . . . I look at it like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. IfI say something it’s a problem. If I don’t say something it’s still a problem.”Taylor’s low sense of efficacy seemed to indicate learned helplessness (Maierand Seligman 1976) whereby she felt no sense of control.In contrast, Ariana and Maria also demonstrated acceptance that is char-

acterized by mindfulness—acting with awareness, nonreactivity—however, itwas associated with greater efficacy. For example, Maria explained a situationwith a student and how she handled it differently after CARE: “I was able towalk away from that situation not feeling defeated. . . . I felt that it just meanstrying to connect with that child and letting her know, ‘It’s OK,’ just tryingdifferent options.” At another point, Maria says, “I’m going to move forward,these kids need to learn, and they’re not going anywhere. We’re going to do



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what we have to do as professionals, and I just keep moving.” Although herdistress tolerance may seem similar to Taylor’s because of the way it is mani-festing (i.e., walking away), her heightened efficacy causes her distress toleranceto take on different meaning. The end result was not to give up on the situationbut rather to “walk away” from negative emotions that the situation triggeredand, if anything, remain resolute in her personal and professional mission to“connect” with and help all her kids “learn.”It was not that teachers who had more positive experiences with CARE

uniformly expressed an increase in their sense of efficacy. The results portraymore nuance than that. For Ariana, the increase in mindfulness gained fromparticipation in CARE accompanied an awareness of her limitations, what out-wardly could seem to be a decrease in efficacy: “So, I definitely think that un-derstanding I’m not an expert, I may be an expert at fractions or something,but I’m not an expert when it comes to everything with teaching, which iskind of an arrogance that you build. . . . You become this ‘I’m superwomanand I can do everything.’” In contrast with learned helplessness, this aware-ness represented more an acceptance of realistic expectations (mindfulness/nonjudging).Another interesting pattern involved the “compassion/empathy” category,

which involves focusing on another’s well-being. Taylor did not have any codedunits in this category, whereas Maria and Ariana had six and five, respectively.Increased compassion/empathy was marked by the teacher’s ability to be “inthe moment” with others, especially students, and to treat them more as indi-viduals with particular needs, not just problems that required their attention.Not surprisingly, increases in mindfulness, especially acting with awareness andnonreactivity, seemed to facilitate compassion/empathy. For example, Arianacommented, “You’re so used to the system and the status quo you don’t realizethat you’re at a point where you’re not connecting with the kids, even thoughyou think you are. You’re not connecting with their humanity.” As a result ofthe CARE training, Maria said, “When I did respond to the kids, it was be-coming more nurturing, it was becoming more understanding, and becomingmore patient. And understanding that, trying to really, really connect with thekids, rather than looking at them as little people. I look at them as a person who,like myself, wanted that attention and really yearned for it and needed it. . . . Itdid get so much better, so much better.” For Maria and Ariana, awarenessextended beyond self-awareness into relational awareness, namely, their abilityto extend compassion to their students. But as Ariana and Maria both noted, itwas their awareness of a lack of connection that preceded their efforts to con-nect more meaningfully and act more compassionately.Of the three teachers, Ariana had significantly more coded units in the “self-

care” and “community/collegiality” categories, 3–4 times as many. Sometimesthese two categories were interrelated. For example, Ariana said, “My favor-

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ite thing that stays with me now, that I still mention to the women who did itwith me, was that sense of community that developed because you took timefor yourself.” She also noted, “I think it’s healthy to have teachers talk aboutthe stress and not just, ‘my curriculum’s incomplete’ but the frustrations, thepain, the emotional disconnect that they feel sometimes.”Not surprisingly, Ariana offered the most evidence of sustaining CARE

practices even well after the training had ended, including a number of practicesthat she did in collaboration with other teachers—those who participated inCARE as well as those who did not. For example, she talked about gettingcolleagues out to go for a walk, without the pressure of time: “Wedon’t have anygoal in mind. We’re not rushing back. We’re going to take the full time to do it,and people actually have built better relationships, which I think helps youmanage the stress.” She models mindful nonreactivity to non-CARE partici-pants: “I say to my colleague who hasn’t had CARE, ‘Let’s just chill for a mo-ment or do this or let’s go outside for a walk.’” Maria also practiced self-care,adopting a number of practices from the CARE training, like mindful eating,breathing, and body scan. Across interview participants, breathing was con-sistently mentioned as a practice that most resonated and that was used withregularity.

Discussion

The purpose of this collective case study is to provide an in-depth analysis of howdifferent teachers manage stress and develop resilience following a mindfulness-based intervention. Investigating patterns of individuals’ subjective experiencesis necessary for understanding how the mechanisms of change in a PD programlike CARE function to develop resilience, which includes managing stress aswell as improving well-being.Regarding stress, we found that the amounts and sources of stress that teach-

ers experience were less important than how they conceptualized their stress.Initially, it may have seemed that Ariana experienced more stress than Taylorand Maria because she had more coded units for total stress, including more inthe “student” subcategory. However, this stress was substantively different thanthat of the others. The stress Ariana articulated was characterized by a strongconcern for students’ welfare and their ability to reach high expectations. Arobust personal mission to meet the needs of students is an individual protectivefactor that seems to buffer against various school stressors. In their study of threeresilient teachers, Gu and Day (2007) similarly concluded that despite facingchallenges, “determination and sustained commitment to [one’s] professionaland moral beliefs” (1313) help teachers to thrive and promote resiliency.



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Our results suggest that emotion regulation in the face of pervasive andsometimes intense stressors is also a potent protective factor for teachers (Castroet al. 2010; Howard and Johnson 2004), and it is related to greater mindful-ness. The three teachers in this study articulated increased mindfulness, espe-cially in the form of awareness of their emotional states that could impedeproductive communication and relationships with others. Researchers study-ing mindfulness-based interventions frequently find improvements in teachers’emotion awareness following the intervention (Benn et al. 2012; Flook et al.2013; Frank et al. 2015; Taylor et al. 2016). However, greater emotion aware-ness is a necessary but insufficient aspect of emotion regulation leading to pur-poseful action. Ariana and Maria reported that greater emotional awarenessled to an ability to respond more appropriately to others, whereas Taylor ar-ticulated that she used this awareness to retreat from conflict situations alto-gether. We hypothesize that to foster resilience effectively, emotion awarenessmust be coupled with a capacity to respond productively when stressful situa-tions and intense emotions arise.Efficacy and distress tolerance seem to enable this capacity and thus are

critical components of the resilience construct. This finding supports and ex-pands on extant literature highlighting the role of teacher efficacy in predictingand developing resilience (Gibbs and Miller 2014; Gu and Day 2007) by spec-ifying the kind of efficacy needed. In this study, the teacher’s ability to with-stand negative emotions and to channel them constructively was more im-portant than becoming aware of what triggered the teacher to respond in apotentially negative way, such as with anger or frustration, or in a way thatfailed to acknowledge the humanity of the others involved. The teachers couldstep away in that moment, take a “mini time-out,” but had to be willing toengage and continue working to achieve the best possible outcomes, especiallyfor the students. They needed a strong sense of purpose and the efficacy to be-lieve they were capable of achieving that purpose (Doney 2013; Howard andJohnson 2004; Tait 2008). Ariana’s and Maria’s distress tolerance and efficacyaligned with their mindfulness in this way, but Taylor was lacking in efficacy,and she struggled to think differently about or reperceive (Shapiro et al. 2006)negative emotions. Instead, Taylor engaged in learned helplessness and whatappeared to be emotional suppression (Gross and John 2003), whereby therewas nothing she could do to improve problematic situations except follow thepath of least resistance by disengaging. Her withdrawal from the situation wasmore permanent, not temporary. It is possible that Taylor’s reaction resultedfrom her increased mindfulness, specifically greater awareness of her ownthoughts. Davidson andKaszniak (2015) note that “as individuals becomemoremindful of their internal experience . . . they may actually become more dys-phoric, at least in the short term, as they notice how chaotic their minds actu-ally are” (585). However, given her lack of efficacy in effecting change, espe-

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cially with challenging students, her increase in self-awareness may not result ingreater resilience, given her compromised well-being.Efficacy may also be important insofar as it relates to personal mission. A

low sense of efficacy, expressed by a lack of knowing what to do when problemsarise, could relate to an inability to maintain one’s personal mission or a lack ofa mission. Although we did not ask participants explicitly about their teachingphilosophy or mission, this came through in text coded in the “efficacy” cat-egory. For two of the three teachers, positive expressions of efficacy containedrepresentations of a personal mission and the belief in their own skills to fulfillthat mission, that mission being to connect with students and help them learn.Like positive emotions that create a productive psychological mind-set in thebroaden-and-build theory (Frederickson 2004), we hypothesize that a strongsense of personal mission may be a key promotive factor that develops teachers’resilience. Future research should investigate the organizational structures thatvalue and promote this kind of teacher efficacy and thus cultivate resilience.Not surprisingly, Maria and Ariana also showed higher rates of compassion,

demonstrated in their desire to humanize their students. Taylor continued toview behavior issues with students through a lens of problems with which shefelt ill-equipped to contend, as opposed to challenges she could overcome andpersonal connections she could improve. We conjecture that teachers’ mind-ful awareness and nonreactivity coupled with a healthy distress tolerance andsense of efficacy enables their ability to respond to others in a way that recog-nizes their humanity and maintains effective relationships, which, in turn, im-proves teachers’ well-being. Teachers may increase their well-being when theirown stresses are not all-consuming and they feel more connected, or at leastbetter able to connect, with their students. These results are consistent withprevious research of mindfulness-based interventions for teachers (Benn et al.2012; Taylor et al. 2016). Benn et al. (2012) found that the shift in perceptionfostered through greater mindfulness allowed teachers to perceive “the otherwithout the veil of clouded judgments,” which likely “encourage[d] individ-uals to become kinder and more sensitive to the needs of others” (1484). Tayloret al. (2016) concluded that better relationships had the reciprocal effect of re-ducing teacher stress. Although we are unable to claim causality from the pres-ent study, it is worth noting that the teacher who had the lowest prevalence ofcoding in the compassion category also rated her stresses involving studentsand administration with the highest number.The existence of additional protective factors, such as community support

and self-care, promotes teachers’ resilience and their ability to capitalize on amindfulness-based program like CARE. Ariana noted the most sources of sup-port, recognized and practiced self-care, and highlighted the importance ofbeing in a supportive community. It may be that her perception of alreadybeing supported and having a community safety net gave her permission to set



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appropriate limits on herself, not to engage in learned helplessness but to rec-ognize the boundaries around what she reasonably could accomplish in herrole, and to accept and operate within those limits. Because Ariana worked atthe same school as Taylor, who did not perceive the support of her adminis-tration or note the importance of community support and who engaged inmoreemotional suppression, the question then is whether a program like CARE cancultivate these protective factors for all teachers. We hypothesize that in ad-dition to helping teachers develop mindful awareness, especially nonreactivity,an effective professional development program that cultivates teachers’ resil-ience builds on the skills with which the teachers feel less confident (e.g., class-room management) and provides structural supports (e.g., supportive com-munity) that increase teachers’ sense of efficacy. Teachers’ resilience seems toinvolve both their perception that they can handle adversity and their percep-tion that they work with others who support them.This research has a number of limitations. As stated previously, the nature

of qualitative data does not lend itself to generalizability. Therefore, the ex-periences of these three teachers do not necessarily represent the experiences ofall teachers who participated in CARE. In addition, we chose to present thesedata in a collective case study, focusing on three teachers in two schools. Theexperiences of teachers in other schools in the sample and the other teachersinterviewed will not be the same. It would also be helpful to conduct multipleinterviews over the course of the intervention to qualitatively track the develop-ment of resilience over time. Because efficacy emerged as a critical aspect indi-cating resilience in the present study but was the only factor of five in which thelarger sample of 224 teachers did not show statistically significant improve-ments ( Jennings et al. 2017), future research examining occupational stress andresilience should examine efficacy, not just in isolation but in tandem with otherconstructs. More qualitative and quantitative data are necessary to understandrelationships between efficacy and other mechanisms of change, especially mind-fulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and personal mission.

Conclusion

The economic costs and loss of human capital resulting from teacher attritionand burnout are substantial (Barnes et al. 2007). According to a report fromthe Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “Remarkably littleis done to manage the processes by which districts identify, acquire, develop,and sustain . . . teacher human capital” (Myung et al. 2013, 5; emphasis added).These results suggest that CARE may cultivate resilience by improving teach-ers’ awareness, emotional regulation, and collegiality, which, when coupledwithhealthy distress tolerance and efficacy, operates as a protective factor against

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burnout. A shift in how educators approach professional development may benecessary, focusing on environmental and personal factors that provide teach-ers a greater capacity to adapt and to meet the needs of their students.

Note

Research on the CARE program was supported by the US Department of Educa-tion, Institute of Educational Sciences R305A140692 to the University of Virginia ( Jen-nings, PI).

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