Objectives: Teachers play a critical role in preparing our children and adolescents for a successful future. However, despite the large number of students impacted by trauma and adversity, teachers are often not well prepared to provide trauma-sensitive support. Furthermore, while working to support students exposed to trauma and adversity, teachers may experience empathy-based stress exacerbating already high levels of stress among them. This narrative review explores the issue of empathy-based stress within the context of the prosocial classroom model which proposes that teachers' social and emotional competence and well-being are key to their ability to create and maintain supportive learning environments critical to student academic and behavioral outcomes.
Methods: Recent findings in neuroscience and education research are applied to support teachers' development of these competencies.
Results: We propose that shifting from empathy-based stress to compassionate responding may be one such competency to help teachers' respond effectively to their students' needs while protecting their own wellbeing.
Conclusion: We review research that supports this proposition and explore implications for teacher professional learning, educational policy, and further research.
Keywords: Compassion; Empathy-based stress; Secondary trauma; Teachers; Trauma; Vicarious trauma.
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