Online Socio-emotional Dyad Training for School Teachers' Well-being and Social Skills

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Empathy- and compassion-based socio-emotional mental training (EmCo): 1. Participants engage in a structured 13-minute partner-based contemplative exercise. Each dyad reflects on two experiences from the previous 24 hours: one involving a difficult emotion and one involving gratitude. Partners take turns speaking while the other listens non-judgmentally. During weeks 1-4, the practice emphasizes empathic listening; during weeks 5-8, compassionate listening. Participants are instructed to attend to bodily sensations associated with the emotions described. The practice aims to improve coping with difficult emotions, empathic and compassionate listening, (self)acceptance, compassion, gratitude, resilience. 2. Participants also attend eight 1.5-hour online group sessions led by Expert Dyad teachers. The coaching sessions help deepen the Dyad practice and educate teachers about body language, coping better with difficult emotions/stress, the benefits of empathy versus compassion and the act of listening from a mindset of empathy versus compassion.

Mindfulness-based Training (MBT): 1. In this intervention, participants will practice 13-minute basic attention-based mindfulness meditation such as the Breathing Meditation (BM). BM is a 13-minute individual exercise that requires participants to focus their attention on the sensations of breathing. Participants have to sustain their attention to breath for long stretches of time, and have to return their attention to their breath when their mind wanders. The key focus is on training attention and interoceptive body awareness. Other practices participants will be taught is mindfulness on sounds (here the object of attention is not the breath but sounds in the environment) as well as open presence meditation. 2. Participants also attend eight 1.5-hour online group sessions led by Expert mindfulness teachers. The coaching sessions help deepen the mindfulness practice and educate teachers about bodily sensations, attention, rumination.

Waitlist Control Group (WCL): 1. Initially, participants in the WLC group will not receive the intervention. They will complete pre- and post-test procedures consisting primarily of self-report questionnaires, and behavioral tasks, as well as ecological momentary assessment (EMA) conducted on four days within two weeks at pre-test and post-test 1 \& 2. 2. The WLC will be offered the EmCo training only after both intervention groups have completed their trainings

Study summary

The Edu:Social School Study 2 is a randomized controlled trial designed to evaluate the effects of an 8-week socio-emotional, partner-based empathy-compassion Dyad training program (EmCo) compared with a mindfulness-based training (MBT) and a waitlist control group (WLC) in school teachers.

The primary objective is to assess the efficacy of the adapted 8-week online EmCo Dyad training program across multiple domains of teacher functioning. Seven domains capture individual-level outcomes: (1) mental health, (2) resilience, (3) attention and cognitive processes, (4) social emotions, (5) stress coping and emotion regulation, (6) listening skills, and (7) voice-based emotional expression (DYVA). Two additional domains assess broader contextual outcomes: (8) classroom teaching and (9) organizational/school level outcomes, reflecting how individual-level changes may translate into perceived changes in the teaching and school context.

To this end, participants will be randomized into one of three groups: (1) an 8-week EmCo Dyad intervention (EmCo), (2) an 8-week mindfulness-based training program (MBT), or (3) a waitlist control group (WLC) that will receive the EmCo intervention after completion of the initial post-test. Both interventions are delivered online via a dedicated study application to ensure scalability and accessibility.

A second aim is to validate the Egocentric Social Network Analysis Paradigm (e-SNAP) as a measure of teachers' perceived social interactions and network structures. This study represents the first randomized controlled trial in teachers to examine whether changes in internal psychological processes are associated with perceived changes in the perception of the quality of interaction between school teachers and their students in the classroom as well as between school teachers and their colleagues in school.

A third aim is to introduce and validate objective measures of emotional processing based on AI-based voice analysis in educational field research. Specifically, the study will evaluate two tasks using different parameters of AI-based emotional voice analysis: (a) the Teacher Voice Assessment (TEAVA), in which teachers' voices are recorded during a teaching-related task, and (b) the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA), conducted during the daily partner-based Dyad practice. In both tasks, non-semantic vocal features (e.g., pitch, loudness, speaking rate, intonation) and vocal emotional expressions (e.g., arousal, valence, dominance, and basic emotional categories) will be analyzed using audEERING devAIce software. No speech content will be transcribed or analyzed.

A final aim is to investigate the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying intervention-related changes. Based on prior research, the EmCo Dyad training is expected to enhance care- and affiliation-related motivational systems associated with positive affect, social emotions and connectedness, and prosocial behavior, while reducing loneliness, social stress, and other forms of psychological vulnerability. In contrast, mindfulness-based training is expected to primarily strengthen attention- and thought-related processes, including present-moment awareness, calming the mind and executive attentional control. These mechanisms are expected to contribute to improvements in mental health and overall well-being across both intervention groups.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring depression, anxiety, and stress (Henry \& Crawford, 2005; Nilges \& Essau, 2021). Higher scores indicate more depression, anxiety, and stress.
• Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring burnout (Maslach \& Jackson, 1981; Schwarzer et al., 2000). Higher scores indicate more burnout.
• UCLA Loneliness Scale (UCLA) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring loneliness severity (Döring \& Bortz, 1993; Russell et al., 1980). Higher scores indicate more loneliness.
• Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring psychological resilience (Connor \& Davidson, 2003; Sarubin et al., 2015). Higher scores indicate more resilience.
• Types of Positive Affect Scale (TPAS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring the frequency and intensity of three distinct types of positive emotions: Activated PA (excitement, energy), Relaxed PA (calm, peacefulness), and Safe/Contentment PA (safety, security) (Gilbert et al., 2008). Higher scores indicate a greater frequency and intensity of experiencing specific types of positive emotions.
• Executive control (Flanker Task; FT) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  This task assesses executive control with three indices reaction times (RT), error rates, and the flanker effect (FE) (Trautwein et al., 2016; 2020). Faster RT, lower error rates and FE indicate higher cognitive control.
• Mind-Wandering — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  These two questions embedded in the flanker task assess mind-wandering during attentional performance (Smallwood, 2015). Lower rates indicate less mind-wandering.
• Socio-Affective Video Task (SoVT) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
  This task assesses behavioral empathy and compassion using emotional video clips (Klimecki et al., 2014, 2013). Higher scores indicate more empathy or more compassion.
• Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scale for Self and Others (SOCS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring self-compassion (SOCS-S) and compassion for others (SOCS-O; Gu et al., 2020). Higher scores indicate more compassion.
• Prosodic Feature Pitch — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Acoustic assessment of the prosodic speech feature pitch (measured in Hz) during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software.
• Prosodic Feature Loudness — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Acoustic assessment of the prosodic speech feature loudness (unitless) during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software.
• Prosodic Feature Speaking Rate — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Acoustic assessment of the prosodic speech feature speaking rate (measured in syllables per minute) during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software.
• Prosodic Feature Intonation — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Acoustic assessment of the prosodic speech feature intonation (unitless) during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software.
• Affect Dimensions of Vocalized Emotional Expressions — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Assessment of continuous affective dimensions of vocalized emotional expressions during participants' daily Dyad practice using audEERING devAIce software. The following parameters will be assessed: arousal, valence, and dominance (each ranging from -1 to 1). Based on arousal-valence scores, the following affect-quadrant values will be calculated: high-arousal-high-valence; low-arousal-high-valence; low-arousal-low-valence; and high-arousal-low valence.
• Affect Categories of Vocalized Emotional Expressions — Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
  Classification of vocalized emotional expressions intro affect categories during participants' daily Dyad practice, analyzed using audEERING devAIce software. The following parameters will be assessed: angry, happy, and sad, expressed as unitless values ranging from 0 to 1 representing category likelihood.
• Stress intensity — Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
  Custom item based on the Stress Appraisal Measure (SAM; Delahaye et al., 2015; Peacock \& Wong, 1990) measuring stress intensity. Higher scores indicate more intense stress.
• Coping strategies — Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
  Custom items based on the Brief-COPE (Carver, 1997; Knoll et al., 2005) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ; Garnefski et al., 2001; Loch et al., 2011) measuring Coping Strategies (Acceptance, Positive Reinterpretation, Social Support, Rumination, Self-Blame, Distraction). Higher scores indicate a higher use of the specified coping strategies.
• Active Empathic Listening Scale (AELS) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring active empathic listening (Bodie, 2011). Higher scores indicate more active empathic listening.
• Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  A scale measuring psychological working conditions (stressors and coping resources) impact employee health and well-being (Kristensen et al., 2005; Nübling, 2005)
• Egocentric Social Network Analysis Paradigm (e-SNAP) — Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
  The e-SNAP is a novel assessment paradigm based on the Affect Grid. Teachers rate their interactions with both students and colleagues in terms of frequency and pleasantness in interactions. In addition, teachers rate in both the student and colleague networks the relationships among each other, allowing to assess positive relations and network density. Higher scores indicate more frequent and more positively experienced interactions, as well as more cohesive and positively connected social networks.

Trial sites (1)

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