Head Start University Partnerships: Using Mindfulness to Improve Educator Well-Being

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There is a nationwide shortage of early childhood care and education workers, resulting in rising family tuition rates and program closures. To address this issue and lessen the burden on families and communities, policymakers and foundations can examine strategies to strengthen workforce retention and job satisfaction.

The Promoting Resilience and Mental Health in Educational Settings for Early Childhood (PROMISE) Intervention is a mindfulness-based wellness program tailored to the unique challenges faced by Head Start educators. The intervention includes three integrated components:

1. TeacherWise: An individual wellness curriculum for education staff;
2. Compassion Practice Restoration and Relationship (CPR2): Group-based resilience-building program; and
3. A leadership-focused quality improvement and peer mentoring model.
    

AIR's Analysis of the PROMISE Intervention

AIR serves as the external analysis support team for a four-year study that examines the outcomes of the PROMISE Intervention, which is grounded in the hypothesis that improving educator well-being enhances cognitive capacity, emotional regulation, and instructional effectiveness. This in turn addresses persistent issues in the workforce sector like chronic stress and burnout, which could lead to an increase in the number of satisfied workers in the field.

The study began with a feasibility pilot study across five Head Start centers and expanded into a randomized controlled trial involving 30 Head Start centers in Washington, D.C.

The project has completed the feasibility pilot and the two-cohort impact study and is currently in the analysis and reporting stage. AIR has conducted preliminary analysis and is currently working on the impact analysis and reporting.

The PROMISE study is one of four Head Start University Partnership Grants awarded to Georgetown University by the Office of Planning, Research, & Evaluation (OPRE), an office of the Administration for Children & Families.