Promoting teachers’ SEL, resilience, and self-efficacy through the PROMEHS program

In the last three decades, many school-based programs aimed at promoting mental health in schools have been implemented around the World. However, most of them primarily targeted students, with little attention given to teachers’ wellbeing. The PROMEHS program addressed this gap by developing a comprehensive evidence-based curriculum to promote the mental health of both students and teachers through a systemic approach. PROMEHS is an Erasmus+ KA3 project co-funded by the European Commission (2019-2022) that involved seven European Countries, namely Italy, Malta, Croatia, Greece, Latvia, Romania, and Portugal. It adopted a quasi-experimental design and a training study methodology. Specifically, teachers participated in a training course and ongoing supervision, where they received handbooks aimed at promoting their own and students’ mental health. The sample included 687 teachers (94% female) working in different grades of schools, from kindergarten to high secondary school. Before and after the implementation of the PROMEHS program, they completed three questionnaires, namely the Social and Emotional Competence of Teachers (SECTRS; Tom, 2012), the 10-item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC 10; Campbell-Sills and Stein, 2007), and the Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale (OSTES; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), aimed at evaluating SEL, resilience, and self-efficacy, respectively. Comparisons between the experimental and control group showed that participation in the PROMEHS program significantly improved teachers’ SEL skills, resilience, and self-efficacy. The results suggest that PROMEHS provides a unique, innovative, and effective evidence-based intervention to promote teachers’ mental health in schools. The findings will also serve to improve national and international educational policies in the Member States working collaboratively with public authorities.