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.

The teaching profession is widely recognized as highly demanding, and teachers report elevated rates of stress and burnout. If left unaddressed, burnout adversely affects teachers' health, job performance, teaching quality, and school turnover rates. Moreover, teacher burnout has important consequences for students. Teachers' emotional exhaustion has been shown to negatively affect students' academic achievement and self-concept in Germany. Given teachers' pivotal role in shaping children's socio-emotional development, addressing psychological vulnerability-including stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and exhaustion-is essential. Strengthening resilience enables teachers to maintain well-being and effective classroom functioning in the face of adversity by supporting adaptive stress management. In addition, strong interpersonal skills such as empathy, compassion and high-quality listening play an important role in the teacher-student communication. Addressing psychological vulnerability and strengthening resilience and social skills, is essential not only for teacher well-being but also for the functioning of educational systems broadly.

In recent years, mindfulness-based interventions focusing on individual mental practices have been expanded to include partner-based social practices (Dyads), which specifically target social skills such as empathy, (self-)compassion, social connectedness and different types of listening. However, dyadic interventions, that is daily mental practices done with a partner, have not yet been systematically investigated in educational settings. Existing evidence suggests that contemplative Dyads may be more effective than solitary mindfulness practices in reducing loneliness and social stress, enhancing social connection, and strengthening resilience. Moreover, dyadic practices appear to engage mechanisms that differ from those underlying traditional mindfulness-based interventions.

Empathy, (self-)compassion, and high-quality listening are core socio-emotional skills in school contexts. However, empathy may lead to empathic distress when individuals are repeatedly exposed to others' suffering, whereas compassion is considered more protective due to its association with positive affect and prosocial motivation. To address this distinction, the Edu:Social School Study 2 implements an empathy-compassion Dyad training program (EmCo), which trains participants in empathic listening and emotion regulation during the first four weeks, followed by (self-)compassion and compassionate listening during the subsequent four weeks.

The EmCo program builds on the Affect Dyad developed in the ReSource project and the online Dyad 10-week intervention program with weekly online coachings and daily app-based Dyads implemented in the CovSocial project. These two large-scale mental training studies, have shown that different types of practices produce distinct effects on psychological and biological outcomes. The ReSource project, a 9-month longitudinal study using behavioral, hormonal, autonomic and neuroimaging (fMRI) measures, compared three training modules, including a mindfulness-based "Presence" module, a socio-affective "Affect" module (including the Affect Dyad) and a socio-cognitive "Perspective" module, and demonstrated that training content differentially affects mind, behavior and brain. Building on this work, the CovSocial project implemented a 10-week fully online design comparing a low-dose purely online socio-emotional Dyad training with a mindfulness-based active control training group. Results showed both shared and distinct effects: while both interventions improved mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, emotion regulation, and compassion, the Dyad training showed stronger effects on resilience, positivity bias, social connectedness, and reductions in loneliness and social stress.

Further, mediation analyses suggest that individual mindfulness practices and partner-based Dyadic practices influence well-being through partly distinct psychological mechanisms, whereas care-based motivational processes could account for Dyad-practice effects and thought-related process for mindfulness-practice effects.

Compared with these prior interventions, the present Edu:Social School intervention program introduces a novel empathy versus compassion listening component and reduces the duration from 10 to 8 weeks, improving feasibility within applied school settings. In an initial Edu:Social School pilot study, 120 teachers participated in a 10-week socio-emotional training program (EmCo). The pilot demonstrated high compliance and provided preliminary evidence for reductions in psychological vulnerability. However, the study lacked an active control group and a reliable waitlist control group, limiting interpretation. In addition, the 10-week duration was difficult to implement within the German school calendar.

The present study is a randomized controlled trial in a sample of school teachers (target N = 900). A multimethod assessment approach will be used, including validated trait and state self-report questionnaires, behavioral phone-based tasks administered via an app application, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) delivered through smartphone notifications. These different assessments are capturing changes across the nine domains mentioned before.

After providing informed consent, participants will be randomized to one of three groups: (1) an empathy-compassion training group (EmCo), based on the Affect Dyad daily mental practice; (2) a mindfulness-based training group, based on attention-based mindfulness practices; or (3) a waitlist control group (WLC). All participants will first complete a pre-test assessment phase, including baseline psychometric measures, phone-based tasks, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants in the intervention groups will then be onboarded through two group-specific online sessions (Onboarding I and II) led by trained instructors, followed by participation in their respective 8-week programs delivered via a dedicated web and smartphone application. These programs include daily partner-based Dyad practices or mindfulness meditations, respectively, as well as weekly 1.5-hour online coaching sessions with expert mental training teachers. Throughout the intervention period, participants will complete brief weekly self-report questionnaires, EMA, and daily pre-post Dyad practice ratings (DPR) to assess changes in key psychological and social processes, which will be examined as potential mediators. At the end of the intervention, all participants will complete a post-test assessment phase comparable to the pre-test (T0) and mid-test (TM), with the addition of a final feedback questionnaire.

Following completion of the initial post-test (T1), participants in the waitlist control group will subsequently receive the same 8-week socio-emotional Dyad intervention (EmCo) and complete an additional mid-tests (TM1) and post-test assessment (T2). After both training groups (EmCo and MBT) have completed their respective interventions, participants will be offered the opportunity to continue their practice via the study app. Participants in the EmCo group will be invited to continue the Dyad practice, whereas participants in the MBT group may choose to continue either the mindfulness-based practice or switch to the EmCo Dyad intervention. This phase of voluntary continued practice will take place in parallel with the 8-week EmCo Dyad training offered to the WLC following post-test.

The study was preregistered on the Open Science Framework (OSF) and is publicly available at https://osf.io/x59pk

Inclusion Criteria:

• Between 18- and 68-years old.
• Currently working as a school teacher in Germany or Austria; grades 1-12; primary, secondary, special needs, and vocational schools.
• Proficient in German.
• Informed consent.
• No symptoms of psychiatric disease within the past two years; healthy population, non-clinical population.
• Stable internet access and necessary technical equipment (mobile phone with internet access).
• No regular contemplative practice (≤ 50 hours total within the past six months).

Exclusion Criteria:

• Insufficient German proficiency.

• Lack of stable internet access or required devices (mobile phone with internet access).

• No informed consent.

• Not currently working as a school teacher.

• Regular contemplative practice (> 50 hours in the past six months (e.g., dyad, mindfulness, compassion-based practices).

• Current psychiatric diagnosis or therapy, or reaching screening cutoffs on:

  • Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9; Martin et al., 2006; Löwe et al., 2004; Cutoff ≥ 20; or endorsing suicidality on the item 9),

  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7; Löwe et al., 2007; Spitzer et al., 2006; Cutoff ≥ 15),

  • Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20; Bagby et al., 1994; Ritz & Kannapin, 2000; Cutoff ≥ 61)

    • In addition, participants will complete the Standardized Assessment of Personality - Abbreviated Scale (SAPAS; Moran et al., 2003) which is not used as quantitative exclusion criteria in step 3, but provides additional information to support the phone call with one of the teachers, as part of the screening process.

After pre-screening and randomized allocation to the three groups via algorithm, participants and coordination staff need to be aware of which intervention arm (EmCo, MBT, or WLC [waitlist control] groups) the participant belongs to in order to be able to group into appropriate coaching slots and onboarding I and II sessions prior to starting the actual 8-week online interventions with daily practice. Outcome assessors and investigators remain blinded to participant allocation for the duration of the study.