Enhancing Female Teachers' Career Well-Being with Positive Psychology Coaching in China

Addressing Female Teachers' Well-Being in China

• ⚠️ Female teachers in China face significant challenges, including a heavy work-family burden and gendered expectations, intensified by the "Double Reduction" policy.
• 🔥 These pressures lead to increased non-instructional workload, prolonged working hours, and higher rates of job burnout compared to male teachers.
• 🧠 Career well-being is defined as an individual's healthy experiences within their career, influenced by demographic, internal, and external factors.

Why Positive Psychology Coaching?

• 💡 Positive psychology coaching was chosen for its proven effectiveness in promoting employee development and well-being by cultivating positive emotions.
• 🎯 Unlike traditional therapy, it is strength-based and future-oriented, focusing on solutions and personal growth rather than pathology.
• ✅ This approach is particularly effective at sustaining long-term well-being gains and is practical for professional development and work stress coping.

Study Design and Intervention

• 🔬 The research involved three sequential studies, with Study 3 focusing on a positive psychology coaching intervention for Chinese female teachers.
• 📊 A 3x3 randomized controlled experiment included 57 female teachers across intervention, active control (relaxation training), and wait-list control groups.
• 🚀 The five-week online coaching program covered self-awareness, strength identification, gratitude, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and self-acceptance.

Significant Outcomes and Efficacy

• 📈 The positive psychology coaching group showed significant improvements in perceived fairness, social support, resilience, professional identity, and career well-being.
• 📉 Participants also experienced a significant reduction in job burnout compared to both control groups.
• 💬 Qualitative interviews reinforced quantitative findings, validating the multi-dimensional efficacy of the coaching in fostering psychological growth and addressing life/work challenges.

Participant Reported Benefits

• 🧠 Psychologically, participants reported reduced negative emotions, increased emotional stability, and enhanced self-awareness and self-acceptance.
• 🛠️ Practically, benefits included reduced burnout, improved work satisfaction, and increased efficacy and overall life participation.
• 🔑 Specific coaching sessions, like those on JOHARI window for self-awareness and gratitude for social support, facilitated these positive changes.

Limitations and Future Research

• ⚠️ Intervention timing (mid-June to mid-August) coincided with stressful academic periods and holidays, potentially influencing participant responses.
• 🌐 Online delivery was necessary but likely resulted in lower group interaction, potentially limiting the intervention's maximum effectiveness.
• 🌱 Future research should prioritize stable intervention timing, explore face-to-face delivery, and collect richer process data with multiple follow-up points.