Teachers' capacity to care and students' well-being-evidence from empirical research

Capacity to care, therefore, includes three crucial and interdependent dimensions: receiving care, self-care and extending care as proposed by the Mind and Life Institute MLI, 2014.. Bes

304 | KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THAN TRE EM VIET NAM LẦN THỨ V

TEACHERS’ CAPACITY TO CARE AND STUDENTS’

WELL-BEING-EVIDENCE FROM EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Tran Thi Ta Anh', Nguyen Phuoc Cat Tuong’, Dinh Thi Hong Van’, & Nguyen Tuan Vinh?

ABSTRACT:

students There are good theoretical implications to believe that students’ well-being much

represent the feeling of empathetic concern and the performance to meet the needs of ourselves

self-care and extending care as proposed by the Mind and Life Institute (2014) Accordingly,

in order to embody caring practices as well as to create and maintain supportive learning environments that enhance students’ well-being while retaining their well-being and love of

is significantly related to their own well-being School-based well-being programs, therefore,

programming

Keywords: teachers; students, well-being; capacity to care

INTRODUCTION

than about them being happy (Young Mind, 2017) This results in a mental health crisis in schools

‘University of Education, Hue University Email: tuanh.tran@yahoo.com

2 University of Education, Hue University.

HIỂU BIẾT VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THÂN Ở TRƯỜNG HỌC VÀ CỘNG ĐỒNG | 305

An estimated three children in every classroom has a diagnosable mental health problem (Green, McGinnity, Meltzer, Ford & Goodman, 2015) Rates of depression and anxiety in teenagers have increased by 70% in the past 25 years (Office for National Statistics, 2015) More seriously, we are now seeing dire and overwhelming statistics on bullying, hate crimes, trauma, anxiety, depression, sexual assault, substance abuse, suicide, behavior-based physical illnesses among students (Brzycki, 2013) Therefore, there has been increasing concern around the world about the well- being of students (Vandra, 2015) The promotion of young people's well-being is also definitely regarded as a key investment for the future to prevent poor mental health, reduce the burden of disease and improve physical health (WHO, 2010)

In this context, there is increasing recognition that teachers play a key role in maintaining

a well-being culture amongst their students (Roffey, 2012) A call for accelerated actions to improve the role of teachers for students’ well-being is becoming very urgent because in many part of the world, including Vietnam, teachers still use violence against their students (Bui, 2016; Merrill, 2018) This can become routine, and the school transforms from a nurturing into a harmful environment for millions of children In Uganda, out of 645 staff surveyed, 43% reported that they had used physical violence against students in the past week (Merrill, 2018) In the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States of India, 78% of 8-year-old students, 34% of 15-year-old students said that they had been physically punished by teachers at school at least once in the previous week (UNICEFT, 2017) In Vietnam, out of 200 students surveyed, 48% fear their teachers; 26.3% reported that their teachers used physical punishment (Institute of Developmental Studies, 2008) Students exposed to violence are at risk of health problems such as depression, alcohol abuse and lower educational achievement (Gilbert et al., 2009; Kearney, Wechsler, Kaur, & Lemos-Miller, 2010) It is difficult to pinpoint why teachers act out against their students but the main cause may

be attributed to their lack of capacity to care (Mind and Life Institute [MHL]], 2014)

Capacity to care can be understood as capacity to represent the feeling of empathetic concern and the performance to meet the needs of ourselves and others (Nguyen, Beyers & Vakcle, 2018) Capacity to care, therefore, includes three crucial and interdependent dimensions: receiving care, self-care and extending care as proposed by the Mind and Life Institute (MLI, 2014) Each

Figure 1 Three modes of care (MLI, 2014) Studies indicated that teachers’ extending care is a significant factor contributing to all domains of students’ life skills development (i.e., personal, social, academic, and career and

306 | KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THÂN TRE EM VIET NAM LAN THỨ V

talent development) and to their academic achievement, which in turn was intrinsically linked

to the enhancement of students’ well-being (Chan, Lau & Yuen, 2011) However, unfortunately,

as a caring teacher, he/she is expected to extend care to his/her students all the time, so many

teachers lack the time and resources to care for and nurture themselves Compassion fatigue is

a form of burnout prevalent in the caring professions that so many teachers have experienced

They feel pressured to perform at extremely high standards, yet are overworked, underpaid (MLI,

2014) Teachers report the highest level of occupational stress in Australia, the United Kingdom

and America (Milburn, 2011) Teaching has been ranked as one of the highest stress-evoking

high level of stress will not perform to the best of their ability and definitely cannot create a warm,

caring environment which is crucial for a successful classroom atmosphere and fundamental to

effectively engage students academically “When teachers become burned out, or worn out, their

personal survival” (Hattie, 2013; p.110) Moreover, a teacher with burnout may find it more

difficult to manage poor student behavior They may use reactive and punitive responses that

2007; Yoon, 2002) Student misbehavior and teacher stress can form a vicious cycle that is difficult

to interrupt (Yoon 2002) Accordingly, students of a burnout teacher also report high levels of

stress, negative perceptions of their school environment, and problems in the social, emotional,

and behavioral areas, such as bullying, conflicts with peers, and externalizing and internalizing

mental health problems (O’Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009)

In order to better able to welcome, care for and see students in their potential, teachers

themselves must also feel safe, valued, and supported, as MLI (2014, p.29) put it “our ability

to create safe, trusting environments in which children feel that they are valued depends on our

capacity to experience ourselves in the same way Moreover, when we feel seen, welcomed and

accepted, we easily value, love and treasure ourselves instead of self-criticizing ourselves”

In the other word, to embody caring practices for students and create classroom environments

that support the on-going development of these practices through shared norms and daily social

interactions in the classroom, the teacher firstly should learn to deepen his/her capacity to receive

care from others They should learn to seek social support and collaboration from their colleagues,

from principals and especially their students Learning to experience themselves as the object

of unconditional care is an essential basis for extending this same unconditional care to others,

including their students (MLI, 2014) Besides, to maintain a sustainable caring relationship and

their students’ well-being, teachers first need to take care of themselves as an old cliché goes,

“take care of yourself first or you will have nothing left to give others.” It is necessary for

teachers to learn to cope with stress and enliven their teaching by promoting awareness, presence,

compassion, reflection, and inspiration — the inner resources they need to help students flourish,

socially, emotionally and academically (Jennings et al., 2011a, 2011b) If they do not learn to

receive care from others and develop self-care, their ability to extend care to their students - is built

ona fragile base and their caring behavior will end up with compassion fatigue (MLI, 2014) In

other words, teachers must practice self-care and receiving care so that they can take good care of their students Collectively, in order to embody caring practices as well as to create and maintain supportive learning environments that enhance students’ well-being while retaining their own well-being and love of teaching, teachers need to acquire and balance the capacity to receive care from others, develop self- care for themselves and extend care to people around them (Figure 2)

HIỂU BIẾT VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THẦN Ở TRƯỜNG HỌC VÀ CỘNG ĐỒNG Í 307

Teachers’ capacity to

care

Students’

well-being

Figure 2 Teachers’ capacity to care and students? well-being

In general, there are good theoretical implications to believe that students’ well-being much depends on teachers’ capacity to care While teachers’ capacity to extend care may directly links to students’ well-being, teachers’ capacity to receive care and develop self-care interacts with teachers? extending care to maintain and enhance teachers’ well-being, which in turn affects students’ well- being However, this assumption has not been clearly discussed empirically Our purpose in this present paper was, therefore, to attempt to synthesize empirical evidence from previous research related to the correlation between teachers’ capacity to care and students’ well-being Based on this synthesis, some implications and recommendations for school-based well-being promotion programs were also derived

METHODS

Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) five-stage framework of a scoping review was applied in this paper: (1) identifying the initial research questions, (2) identifying relevant studies, (3) study selection, (4) charting the data, and (5) collating, summarizing and reporting the results were utilized in this review

Identifying Research Questions

The main focus of this paper is to synthesize empirical evidence from previous research related to the relationship between teachers’ capacity to care and students’ well-being In order to explore and map the relevant literature, we identify the following review questions:

1, What is the relationship between teachers’ capacity to care (i.e receiving care, self-care and extend care) and students’ well-being?

308 | KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THAN TRE EM VIET NAM LAN THU V

extend care) in teachers that affects students’ well-being?

Identifying Relevant Studies

We included studies based on the following criteria: (1) studying the relationship between teachers’ capacity to care (i.e., receiving care, self-care and extending care) and well-being in students, including any related concepts of care (e.g., empathy, compassion, self-compassion or social support) and well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, positive/negative effects, flourishing, or positive functioning); (2) studying the effectiveness of compassion training programs for teachers

students’ well-being; (3) being original and peer-reviewed articles or dissertations; (4) being

and exclusion criteria is presented in table 4

‘Table 1 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

peer review journal, dissertation book chapters, commentaries or

conferences abstracts Population and sample Students-(K-12 and undergraduates) All other agents

capacity to care and students’ well- | teachers’ -capacity to care and

Settings School settings and institutional | All other settings

Table 2 Key search term Search term

Component 1: “teachers”

Component 2: “students”

39 $6

“social support”, OR “empathy”, OR “gompassion” OR “self-compassion”

“stress” OR “anxiety” OR “depression” OR “positive functioning” OR “flourishing”)

HIỂU BIẾT VE SỨC KHỎE TÂM THÂN Ở TRƯỜNG HỌC VÀ CỘNG ĐỒNG Í 309

Study Selection

Records identified through Additional records identified

(n= 132)

Level 1: Screening: Records screened

Records excluded

Full-text articles assessed for eligibility

(n= 90)

Full-text articles excluded (n = 72)

synthesis (n= 18)

Figure 3 Flow diagram of article selection Overall, the search strategy identified 572 records There were a number of articles removed from the search as they were duplicated in those databases Besides, the screening process of the abstracts revealed some articles that were irrelevant These articles were primarily associated with capacity to care in nursing contexts, irrelevant participants or related with irrelevant concepts Guided by the inclusion and exclusion criteria, only 18 were retained for the final synthesis

Data Charting and Collation

Summarized information related to included studies were developed Author, year, location

of study, study design and sample size and brief outcomes of the individual selected study were presented in Table 3

Summarizing and Reporting Findings

Eighteen studies including cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental, meta-analysis, systematic review studies were selected for analysis (Table 3) Most of them (13 studies) focus on teachers’ capacity to extend care and students’ well-being As seen from Table 3, two longitudinal studies of Péssel, Rudasill, Sawyer, Spence, and Bjerg (2013) and Reddy, Rhodes, and Mulhall (2003) on a very large sample showed that increases in teachers? ability to provide support and care to students could result in increase in emotional adjustment and decreases in depressive symptomology over among adolescents Study by Tenant et al (2015) and Van Ryzin, Gravely,

310 | KỸ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THAN TRE EM VIET NAM LẦN THỨ V

and Roseth (2009) demonstrated that teachers’ support promotes academic and social-emotional functioning of adolescents Guess and Bowlings (2016) also found out that there was a significant correlation between teachers’ support and students’ life satisfaction Specifically, Miller (2008) revealed that teachers’ extending caring behavior such as “willingness to listen; be friend; reward students with appropriate behaviors; reduce anxiety” will decrease behavior problems during class and improve student’s behavior, which leads to positive growth of adolescents

No studies have directly addressed the impact of teachers’ capacity to receive care and develop self:care on students’ well-being Rather, only 03 studies focus on the relationship between teachers’ capacity to receive care with their own well-being, with the implications that teachers’ well-being may lead to students’ well-being Typically, review research by Split et al (2011) insisted that the influence of affective teacher-student relationships on teachers’ well-being was very important Only two studies provide evidence for the link between teachers’ capacity to develop self-care and their own well-being Studies by Jennings et al (2011) partly addressed this issue Teachers

mindfulness-based intervention program uniquely designed to help teachers with self-care practices to reduce stress, manage anger and other difficult emotion, significantly improved their well-being More importantly, teachers also increased their ability to provide optimal emotional

students’ well-being

No empirical studies have directly and simultaneously examined the relationship between all

in predicting well-being in students

DISCUSSION

Teachers’ capacity to care (i.e receiving care, self-care and extend care) is expected associated with students’ overall well-being However, all relevant research only foeuses öñ the relationship

indeed, expectedly suggest that teachers’ extending care positively impacts students’ well-being

much you care” (Maxwell, n.d.) Support and care from teachers are indeed at heart of students’ lives Students who have caring relationships with teachers develop academically, emotionally and socially

characteristic of what teachers do and are, but rather that it depended on students’ reciprocal

position to offer the same support to their students The acknowledgment, respect, and support

HIỂU BIẾT VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THÂN Ở TRƯỜNG HỌC VÀ CỘNG ĐỒNG Ì 311 studies selected for analysis in this present study confirm that teacher wellbeing is predicted by the quality and quantity of their relationships with students A positive sense of wellbeing does indeed contribute to work satisfaction and productivity, and most importantly, teachers’ positive influence on their student’s wellbeing The positive relationships with students, parents, colleagues and leadership can have an affirmative influence on teachers’ sense of well-being and then their students’ well-being This is an area worthy of further research Based on our search, there is very little research on how teachers’ capacity to care impact the professional and personal lives of teachers and no studies have investigated the relationship teachers’ capacity to receive care and students’ well-being Similarly, future research is needed to investigate the relationship between teachers’ capacity to develop self-care and their own well-being as well as their students’ well-being Self-care practices help teachers meet the challenges in a positive way to maintain their well-being

so that they are able to take care of their students’ well-being More significantly, the relationship between teachers’ capacity to care and students’ well-being should be holistically examined in the light of the interaction and combination of care dimensions rather than separately consider each dimension Studies confirming the interaction between care dimensions to predict well-being might provide us a more comprehensive understanding about the link between teachers’ capacity

to care and students’ well-being This avenue should be fruitfully explored in future studies

In another aspect, it can be generalized from relevant studies that teachers’ capacity to care and enhances students’ well-being in two dimensions: firstly, teachers’ capacity to care help create a caring environment and supportive student-teacher relationships that help students flourish socially, emotionally and academically Supportive student-teacher relationships play an important role in students’ feelings of connectedness to school and social-emotional outcomes Secondly, students learn to develop self-discipline, support and encourage one another by teachers modeling desired cating behaviors (Noddings, 2005) Students learn to become caring by being in care Students also learn from the way teachers regulate their emotions in a constructive way, successfully solve problems in potentially stressful situations and effectively seek support from colleagues and their students Social and emotional competencies of teachers, indeed, have a great impact on the academic performance, social-emotional learning and well- -being of their own students Gones & Bouffard, 2012)

And such, in order to enhance students’ well-being, teachers need to be supported in the development of their capacity to care for their own sake so that they can model desired caring behaviors and foster a caring environment for students F ‘indings from a study conducted by Wanless and Domitrovich (2015) on school’s readiness to implement new intervention affirmed that teachers with strong social-emotional skills tend to conduct new social-emotional intervention programs more faithfully It is why school-based well-being programs should begin with training activities to build teachers’ capacity to care as a precursor to student programming (MIL, 2014) Schonert-Reichl et al (2016) even highlighted that it is necessary to provide care training not only for in-service teachers as professional development but also for pre-service teachers

312 | KỸ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ VỀ SỨC KHỎE TÂM THAN TRE EM VIET NAM LẦN THỨ V

“(ssoussojador

“0IOpe1oq

“KHIOAA

“1©ØU8

‘gureys

‘worssoidep

“4‡@Ixưe

?S4VN) SUOHOe

2IUØPEOE

9AJJ#ổSU

IỊA

92/102

ÁToAnZsu

(§9£°86=U)

SoIpT4§

Ayueoyrasis

(erte1

“apHd

“do

45212101

SISÁ†eu9-019IN

sotenpei8ropưn

8102

on

“+ueuofs

“82

!SqVđ) suonoure

9TI9P929

(}ữee†d

em

aaTysod

YIM p9TB[2I09

Ẩ[aArsod

Apuvoyrusis

1Ođđng

190891

292pIA9 8OS

219111,

“HOTO57SII6S

1ioddns

[EIOIEIHIOJUT

99412

P2181SUOUI9P

UOIBI902

va

ASAINS

(óyI

JS9UỔH

HA

“UOD26JSIIES

,5}2959[OPĐ

199195 TEUOTI22S-SSO1O

§1#9Á

3100

vn

yin ÁT}UE9HTU8IS

p28I94109

212A%

1IOddfS

190291,

'sonAioe

8ururea[

8unedrariyed

[ym 128ưe

'sseulddegun

“0p3IQQ

91001

p@MOđaI Siegow)

p2IOUẩI

peHoddnsưn

OUAA

W21PJTO

'4SE4IUG9

'U100155019

†OO9S

†euipm8uoT

(Ir9=w)

€00Z

T506

2p918 1J)0-£

91pJT4

1m1

2iqø11oruroo

2s

'£ddeu

ÁaU

8UT)S916101

S211TA1}9E

9101998

†4©(@A[OAUE

pƯnG S1229e1

p2teTserddt

0444

091PTO)

‘Addeyun

“peroq

(g-u)

“srgreisodesdV

ẤT93IJ SIOUI

19299]

„SpEI8

oogag

2Apeiiienb

S00£

SJ02pT4s

OO0os

8H

sjorued

Ady}

“porousl

OQ4A

S‡I9PTS

"ueuidoJeAop

(cc0=u) sI202e1

yưeie)

'uaudo[aAap

(euosiad

'82)

1uetdo†eAop Adams

8uo3

wena,

fooyss

(€LƯS1=9)

(sjooyos

1107

TPIS

Suapnys

sureuop

Saynqis}u09

TEUOH26S-SSO12)

8u9H

TT

“IEq2)

Jojoey

JUEOMIUỔIS

sioyows]

Woy cv)

ÁTepuO22S)

S}0e999I0PW

s8uipug u#A2I33I

3u112s

uốIs9q

SjHEdJOIjatd

ÁAyưn02)

Away

Apis

8u†q-I[2AA

,SI1225910pE

pữE

92192

Á1Jagdø2 ,S1oq9991

3uAo[dxa

S2IpHJS

3I4EL

ONG | 313 CỘNG Ð

ÂM THÂN Ở TRƯỜNG HỌC VÀ OET

HIEU BIET VE SUC KH

“€IAN9OE12đ11/0101911201