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

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.

Conditions

• Intervention (Training) Condition
• Waitlist Control Group

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

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.

BEHAVIORAL

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.

OTHER

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

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Max Planck Social Neuroscience Lab

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tania Singer, PhD · Social Neuroscience Lab | Max Planck Society

• Philipp Beuchel, Ph.D. · Social Neuroscience Lab | Max Planck Society

• Ananda Zeas-Sigüenza, Ph.D. · Social Neuroscience Lab | Max Planck Society

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

68 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-06-01

Primary Completion

2026-12-20

Completion

2027-04-03