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

The stakes could hardly be higher. Secondary school learners occupy a pivotal developmental window during which values, attitudes, and lifelong habits take root. At this stage of adolescence, students develop the abstract reasoning, ethical judgment, and sense of social responsibility that complex environmental issues demand. International frameworks, including Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 and UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development agenda, explicitly call for education systems to move beyond knowledge transmission toward transformative learning. When environmental education is intentionally integrated into secondary curricula, the review argues, it can cultivate the critical thinking, systems thinking, and problem-solving skills that empower young people to engage with environmental challenges at local, national, and global scales. But the authors found that in many African contexts this potential remains largely unrealized, with environmental concepts often treated as peripheral add-ons rather than core learning priorities.

The research team, led by Victor Okoth Saoke of the University of Embu in Kenya alongside colleagues at the University of Embu and the University of Hail in Saudi Arabia, conducted an extensive search across Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and African Journals Online, supplemented by grey literature from UNESCO, UNEP, the World Bank, and FAO. From an initial pool of 672 records, rigorous screening narrowed the field to 22 studies meeting strict eligibility criteria, including empirical designs, African secondary school settings, and clear focus on curriculum integration, pedagogy, learner outcomes, or institutional factors. Quality was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool for empirical studies and the AACODS checklist for grey literature. The methodological landscape of the included research was diverse: twelve systematic reviews, four qualitative investigations, two mixed-methods studies, two policy analyses, and two quasi-experimental studies, with geographic coverage spanning Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, and beyond.

Three dominant models of curriculum integration emerged from the synthesis. The infusion model, the most common entry point, embeds environmental concepts across existing subjects such as biology, geography, agriculture, and social studies. When executed intentionally, infusion fosters interdisciplinary thinking, allowing a single phenomenon like river ecology to be examined through hydrology, land-use economics, and civic responsibility simultaneously. The review found this approach particularly pragmatic in resource-constrained systems where adding new subjects is politically or financially difficult. However, without careful curriculum mapping and explicit learning outcomes, infusion degrades into a disjointed series of mentions, and teachers facing heavy examination pressure routinely sideline environmental content that is not assessed.

Stand-alone environmental science subjects offer a contrasting model with distinct advantages. By dedicating timetable space to sustained inquiry, fieldwork, and project-based assessment, well-designed stand-alone courses can produce deeper conceptual understanding and more robust competency development. Naming a subject as environmental science also carries symbolic weight, signaling institutional priority and legitimizing investment in specialist teachers and materials. Yet the review cautions that stand-alone subjects are not a panacea. In crowded timetables and under-resourced contexts, they often become electives restricted to better-funded schools, reproducing equity gaps in environmental literacy. The third model, whole-school approaches, treats sustainability as a school-wide enterprise spanning curricula, management routines, student eco-committees, gardens, waste management, and community partnerships. Global programs such as Eco-Schools exemplify this strategy, and evidence shows substantial gains in learner attitudes, leadership, and everyday sustainable practices because environmental responsibility becomes a lived habit rather than a one-off lesson.

Pedagogy emerged as at least as important as curriculum placement. The literature converges on a clear finding: experiential, outdoor, and inquiry-based teaching methods consistently outperform didactic, lecture-based instruction in strengthening environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Experiential learning grounded in activities such as water-quality testing, biodiversity surveys, and school waste audits deepens retention and strengthens the affective attachment to nature that predicts conservation behavior, provided hands-on activity is paired with structured reflection. Outdoor and place-based learning enhances cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes simultaneously, fostering connectedness to nature, a psychological construct strongly associated with pro-environmental attitudes. Problem-based learning reframes environmental topics around authentic local dilemmas, from polluted rivers to groundwater scarcity, cultivating the systems thinking and collaboration needed for sustainability-oriented citizenship. Service learning and school-community projects add a civic dimension, giving students real-world experience of environmental action and its consequences.

The impact on learners follows a consistent but uneven pattern. Environmental knowledge gains are robust and well-documented across study designs, with meta-analytic evidence confirming significant short-term improvements in understanding of ecosystems, climate change, and conservation practice. Attitudinal shifts, including greater care for nature and stronger environmental values, are also widely reported, particularly in programs using experiential and participatory pedagogies such as fieldwork, citizen science, and service learning. Behavioral outcomes, however, are the most contested. Some school and community programs report meaningful increases in recycling, energy conservation, and tree planting, while other evaluations find modest or statistically insignificant effects, especially for behaviors requiring sustained effort or structural support. Self-reported measures frequently inflate estimates compared with observed behaviors, and evidence for long-term retention of both knowledge and attitudes remains thin due to short follow-up periods.

The review identifies a cluster of structural barriers that repeatedly undermine implementation. Teacher preparedness stands out as a central constraint: many secondary school teachers lack formal training in environmental education or education for sustainable development, limiting their confidence and capacity to integrate environmental concepts into subject teaching. Curriculum overload compounds the problem, as examination-oriented systems push teachers to prioritize assessed content over cross-cutting themes. Resource constraints further limit experiential approaches, with many schools lacking teaching materials, laboratory facilities, outdoor learning spaces, and community partnerships. Weak assessment frameworks reduce accountability, making it difficult to evaluate whether environmental education actually influences learner behavior. The authors also flag equity concerns, noting that high-quality environmental education experiences are disproportionately available to better-resourced schools, risking a widening of existing educational inequalities unless policy deliberately prioritizes low-cost, high-impact interventions and scalable teacher training.

Despite these challenges, the review’s conclusions are constructive. Environmental education holds substantial promise as a transformative force in secondary schooling, but realizing it demands coherent, system-wide effort. The authors advocate hybrid strategies that combine infusion across all classrooms, targeted stand-alone courses for depth and specialist skills, and whole-school programs that cultivate habits and agency, all supported by sustained teacher professional development, community partnerships, and assessment reform that rewards inquiry, practical skills, and civic action. Programs addressing psychological mediators such as environmental identity, self-efficacy, and social norms show the strongest behavioral benefits. The review also highlights a critical research gap: longitudinal, context-sensitive studies tracking how school-based environmental education shapes learners’ trajectories into adulthood remain scarce, and the authors call for mixed-methods, multi-level designs capable of demonstrating lasting impact. Bridging the persistent gap between policy aspiration and classroom reality, the study concludes, is the decisive task if African secondary schools are to produce a generation equipped not merely to understand the environmental crisis but to act upon it.

The review’s methodological transparency reflects broader shifts in how education evidence is produced and trusted. By following PRISMA reporting standards, the authors made their search strings, eligibility decisions, and appraisal steps auditable, which matters in a field where advocacy often outruns evidence. The inclusion of policy documents alongside empirical studies is also notable, since it allowed the team to compare what governments promise on paper with what classrooms actually deliver, a comparison that proved central to their diagnosis of implementation gaps.

One underappreciated dimension of the findings concerns measurement itself. Because most behavioral outcomes in the included studies relied on learner self-reports, the true effect of school programs on everyday practices such as waste sorting or water conservation remains uncertain. The authors’ call for observational designs and longer follow-up periods echoes a wider concern in environmental psychology, where the link between stated intentions and sustained behavior is known to be fragile. Studies that track learners beyond graduation, into household and community settings, would provide far stronger evidence of whether secondary schooling produces durable environmental citizens.

Geographic coverage also deserves scrutiny. The included studies clustered in a handful of countries, leaving large parts of the continent, particularly Francophone and Lusophone Africa, thinly represented in the evidence base. This unevenness limits the generalizability of the synthesis and means curriculum reforms in many nations are proceeding without locally relevant research. The authors suggest that investment in African education research capacity, including support for local journals and open-access publication, would help close this gap.

Finally, the review’s emphasis on psychological mediators such as connectedness to nature and self-efficacy offers a practical lever for designers. Programs that deliberately build emotional bonds with local environments, rather than transmitting facts alone, appear most likely to convert classroom learning into lifelong stewardship.

Subject of Research: A PRISMA-based systematic review of environmental education integration, pedagogy, and learner outcomes in African secondary schooling.

Article Title: Environmental education in African secondary schooling: a PRISMA-based systematic review

Article References: Saoke, V. O., Asweto, C. O., Kyalo, A. M., Gitonga, C. M., & Alzain, M. A. (2026). Environmental education in African secondary schooling: a PRISMA-based systematic review. Discover Conservation, 3(1), Article 38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44353-026-00108-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44353-026-00108-9

Keywords: environmental education, secondary schooling, Africa, curriculum integration, PRISMA, systematic review, experiential learning, pro-environmental behavior, teacher preparedness, education for sustainable development, whole-school approach, conservation awareness