Two-Year Study Finds Mindfulness Training Boosts Teachers’ Self-Compassion and Confidence

Teaching has become one of the most psychologically demanding professions in the modern workforce, with surveys across Europe and beyond showing that nearly half of lower secondary teachers report considerable work-related stress. Against this backdrop, a new two-year longitudinal study published in the journal School Mental Health offers some of the rarest evidence yet on what happens when educators receive sustained mindfulness training as part of a whole-school approach. The findings suggest that while mindfulness may not be a cure-all for the deep emotional strains of the classroom, it can meaningfully strengthen the inner psychological resources teachers rely on every day, with benefits that persist for at least two full years.

The research, led by Bryndís Jóna Jónsdóttir of the University of Iceland together with colleagues from the University of Iceland and the Mindfulness Centre in Reykjavík, followed 150 educators from five public compulsory schools serving pupils aged six to fifteen. The study was designed to answer a question that has dogged the field for years: do the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions actually last, or do they fade once the initial enthusiasm of an eight-week course wears off? Most previous studies have measured outcomes only three to twelve months after training, leaving the long-term picture largely unknown.

To address that gap, the researchers structured the study around a clear conceptual distinction between what they call mental health skills and mental health outcomes. The skills category included mindfulness itself, self-compassion, and teachers’ sense of professional self-efficacy, all understood as modifiable psychological capacities that can be developed through training. The outcomes category covered perceived stress, anxiety, and depression, reflecting an individual’s current state of psychological functioning and distress. This framework allowed the team to track both the resources educators build and the symptoms they carry, across four measurement waves at baseline and at three, twelve, and twenty-four months.

The intervention at the heart of the study was Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Life, or MBCT-L, an adaptation of the well-known mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program designed for broader populations with a greater emphasis on appreciation and gratitude. Educators in the three intervention schools completed an eight-week course of weekly group sessions combining guided mindfulness practices, reflective inquiry, group dialogue, and home practice. Crucially, the course was embedded in a broader whole-school implementation: each school formed a mindfulness implementation team that promoted practice spaces, informative materials, and brief mindfulness activities woven into daily school life. Optional teacher training was later offered to build internal capacity for bringing age-appropriate mindfulness to students, though this component was not part of the well-being intervention being evaluated.

Methodologically, the study was a non-randomized trial, with three schools allocated to the intervention and two serving as a waitlist comparison group that would receive the training after the follow-up period. The researchers acknowledge this as a key limitation, since school preferences rather than chance determined group assignment, potentially allowing unmeasured factors such as leadership support or school culture to influence results. Data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models that accounted for the nesting of repeated measurements within teachers and teachers within schools, fitted with restricted maximum likelihood to handle the modest sample size. Effect sizes were interpreted using conventional benchmarks, with small effects around 0.2 and medium effects around 0.5 on Cohen’s d.

The results on mental health skills were the study’s strongest and most durable findings. Self-compassion showed statistically significant time-by-group interaction effects favoring the intervention group at every measurement point, from three months through the full two-year follow-up. Teacher sense of efficacy, measured with a validated nine-item scale covering instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management, became significantly different between groups at twelve and twenty-four months, even though the difference was not yet significant at three months. Mindfulness scores themselves improved significantly within the intervention group at all time points, though the between-group comparison at twenty-four months was only marginally significant, with a small-to-moderate effect size of 0.34, partly because the comparison group showed an unexpected rise in mindfulness scores at twelve months that the researchers could not explain with available data.

The sustained gains in self-compassion may be the study’s most consequential result. Teaching is a profession characterized by high expectations, constant evaluation, and frequent self-critical tendencies, and prior research has linked self-compassion to lower perceived stress and better occupational health among educators. In one Australian study cited by the authors, self-compassion was the single strongest predictor of lower stress, ahead of mindfulness itself. The Icelandic findings suggest that mindfulness training can cultivate this capacity for self-kindness in a way that endures, potentially helping teachers respond to professional setbacks with balance rather than harsh self-judgment. The persistence of improved self-efficacy is equally notable, given the well-established associations between teachers’ beliefs in their own effectiveness and job satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

The picture for mental health outcomes was more nuanced. Perceived stress, measured with the widely used Perceived Stress Scale, decreased significantly in the intervention group relative to the comparison group at three and twelve months, with small-to-moderate effects. At twenty-four months the difference remained in favor of the intervention group but was no longer statistically significant, suggesting the stress-reduction benefit may attenuate over time or that the study lacked the statistical power to detect it in a smaller sample. Anxiety showed significant within-group decreases at three and twelve months but no significant between-group differences, and depression showed no significant effects at all. The authors suggest a likely floor effect: both groups began with minimal to mild levels of anxiety and depression, leaving little room for measurable improvement in a generally non-clinical population.

These mixed results echo the broader and sometimes inconsistent literature on mindfulness in schools. The large-scale UK MYRIAD trial, which tested school-based mindfulness training, found short-term reductions in teacher burnout but no significant differences on broader mental health indicators compared with usual provision. A meta-analysis by Klingbeil and Renshaw reported a moderate overall effect size of 0.60 for mindfulness interventions on teachers’ outcomes, while systematic reviews have consistently called for more rigorous longitudinal research extending beyond the typical three-to-six-month follow-up window. The Icelandic study directly answers that call, providing four-wave data across twenty-four months, though the authors caution that their small, self-selected, predominantly female sample of 97 percent women limits generalizability.

Participation was voluntary, with 56 percent of eligible educators in intervention schools enrolling and attending an average of 7.3 of the eight sessions, a level of engagement the researchers note aligns with recommendations that mindfulness should never be compulsory. Attrition reduced the sample over time, with 51 percent of the intervention group and 64 percent of the comparison group completing the final follow-up, though sensitivity analyses excluding participants with only baseline data left the findings substantively unchanged. The study relied entirely on self-report measures, and the authors recommend that future work incorporate observational, physiological, and qualitative data. They also call for research into whether improvements in educator well-being ripple outward into school climate, staff retention, absenteeism, teaching quality, and student outcomes. For now, the message is cautiously encouraging: mindfulness training may not eliminate the structural stressors of teaching, but it appears capable of building psychological resources, particularly self-compassion and professional confidence, that educators can draw on for years, positioning it as a promising long-term health-promotion strategy for the profession rather than a quick fix for existing distress.

Subject of Research: Long-term effects of a school-based mindfulness intervention on educators' mental health skills and outcomes over two years

Article Title: Mindfulness and Educators’ Mental Health and Well-Being: Outcomes of a Two-Year Study

Article References: Jónsdóttir, B. J., Stefánsson, K. K., Kaldalóns, I. V., Frostadóttir, A. D., & Jónsson, Ó. P. (2026). Mindfulness and Educators’ Mental Health and Well-Being: Outcomes of a Two-Year Study. School Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-026-09914-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12310-026-09914-x

Keywords: mindfulness, educators, teacher well-being, self-compassion, self-efficacy, stress, mental health, MBCT-L, whole-school approach, longitudinal study, burnout, school mental health