Developing and Evaluating a Positive Psychology Course for Enhancing Educator Mental Health, Physical Health, and Wellbeing

To address educator distress, we used a pre-experimental design with no control condition to evaluate outcomes associated with a novel three-credit, graduate-level, asynchronous positive psychology course on seven wellbeing, mental health, and physical health outcomes. Data were collected across five cohorts spanning 20 months. Overall, 266 of 293 (90.8%) enrolled participants completed the study. Using a linear mixed-effects model for data analysis, significant improvements were observed on all 7 outcomes. Large or nearly large effect sizes were obtained for negative affect (d = .99), positive affect (d = .96), depression (d = .86), and physical health (d = .72). Using a Jacobson-Truax Reliable Change Index analysis, 39 of 57 (68.4%) educators who initially self-reported depression symptoms showed reliable and significant symptom reduction. These preliminary results indicate that an asynchronous graduate-level positive psychology course may make a meaningful difference in the personal and professional lives of educators and warrants further research.