Promising Findings that the Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators' Program (CHIME) Strengthens Early Childhood Teachers' Emotional Resources: An Iterative Study

Holly Hatton-Bowers, Caron Clark, Gilbert Parra, Jessica Calvi, Michael Yellow Bird, Pearl Avari, Jaclynn Foged, John Smith, Holly Hatton-Bowers, Caron Clark, Gilbert Parra, Jessica Calvi, Michael Yellow Bird, Pearl Avari, Jaclynn Foged, John Smith

Abstract

Findings suggest that an eight-week mindfulness compassion-based program, Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators (CHIME), is a feasible professional development intervention for early childhood (EC) teachers to support their emotion regulation and psychological and workplace well-being. We offer preliminary evidence that learning about mindfulness, self-compassion, and social-emotional learning supports EC teachers in strengthening their knowledge and application of practices to be more mindful and less emotionally reactive and emotionally exhausted at work. In analyzing both EC teacher feedback and survey data from two pilot studies, there was promising evidence that participating in CHIME enhanced awareness of emotions and the development of strategies to manage emotions. As CHIME is further developed and refined it will be integral to have collaborative engagement and participation from EC teachers and programs to ensure that learning these practices are relevant, helpful, meaningful, and sustainable.

Keywords: Early care and education; Early childhood teachers' mindfulness; Emotion regulation; Iterative development; Professional development; Well-being.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

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