Mindfulness, Commitment and Well-Being among School Teachers

Abstract

Teachers are a dynamic force of any educational system who are not only responsible for preparing young people but also help them to lead successful and productive life. Considering their pivotal role, mindfulness, commitment and well-being of teachers are thought to be a fundamental pre-requisite for healthy, constructive and quality teaching. There are many factors which are related to mindfulness, commitment and well-being of teachers. Among them grades of teachers and emoluments earned by them i.e. the financial condition and also their gender seem to be very important. The present research aims to study whether mindfulness, commitment and well-being differ in post-graduate teachers (PGTs) and trained graduate teachers (TGTs), and male and female teachers. For this purpose 40 PGTs and 40 TGTs were taken from different schools of Delhi on availability/ purposive basis. There were 20 males and 20 female teachers in each group of PGTs and TGTs. The PGTs and TGTs of the same gender were merged in order to sort out male and female teachers. Thus two groups of 40 male and 40 female teachers barring their grades were formed. Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) by Walach, Buchheld, Grossman & Schmidt, Organizational Commitment Instrument developed by Balaji and PGI Well-being Scale of Verma and Verma were administered on them. t-test was used to test the significance of difference between PGTs and TGTs, and male and female teachers on the three measures. PGTs were found to be significantly better than TGTs on all the measures and female teachers were significantly better than male teachers on all the measures.