Abstract
A realistic-positive attitude has repeatedly been identified as an important protective factor against school teachers’ stress and strain. However, effective programmes fostering teachers’ positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviours are still lacking to date. Despite mounting evidence showing their effectiveness, positive psychological interventions have seldom been applied and studied in the work environment of teachers. While initial evidence highlights the potential value of positive interventions for teachers, existing studies have significant shortcomings due to small sample sizes, and limitations in study and intervention designs. This paper documents a placebo-controlled field experiment testing the effects of an online-based positive intervention programme. In total, 309 German school teachers were surveyed at three intervals (pre-intervention, post-intervention, follow-up). The results show an increase in job satisfaction and teacher engagement that lasts for two weeks post-intervention. Furthermore, long-term decreases in emotional exhaustion were observed. The effects were of a small size. In contrast, significant mean changes were not observed under the placebo condition. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
Highlights
In 2002, the Scottish Executive Education Department commissioned a review of the research literature on teacher stress. Wilson’s (2002) comprehensive overview of the International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology (2020) 5:77–97 research findings spanning a 10-year period reported that teachers were exposed to jobspecific tasks and conditions that resulted in stress and strain, which in turn could cause psychological and physical illnesses
The effectiveness of positive psychological interventions (PPIs) embedded in private-life contexts has raised the question of whether workplace-related PPIs could be beneficial for workplace-related factors, such as job satisfaction, work engagement, and emotional exhaustion (McCullough 2015)
While the means for job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion had medium rates at interval 1, the means for teacher engagement were above the theoretical scale average of 2.5
Summary
Positive psychology explores the so-called positive activities and their impacts on the happiness and well-being of clinical and non-distressed populations Based on these findings, interventions have been developed with the aim of promoting happiness and positivity both inside and outside of therapeutic settings. Interventions have been developed with the aim of promoting happiness and positivity both inside and outside of therapeutic settings Such positive psychological interventions (PPIs) are defined as ‘intentional activities aimed at cultivating positive feelings, positive behaviours, or positive cognition’ The latest developments lead to effective selfadministered programmes for everyday usage that are increasingly being offered directly to online users (Bolier and Abello 2014) Despite all these developments, PPIs for the work context are rather scarce, especially for school teachers. This paper presents a randomised placebo-controlled field experiment that investigates the potential benefits of an online-based intervention programme containing six positive activities for teachers
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