Cultivating Adolescents’ Self-Compassion Through Mindfulness: The Role of Self-Regulation at Both the Individual- and Classroom-Level

Abstract

School-based mindfulness programs help students manage stress and promote well-being. These programs largely reflect a developmental psychological mindfulness framework that posits that intrinsic states of mindfulness and basic compassion can be cultivated into traits through socialization and training. Yet less is known about how program effects vary depending on individual and classroom differences in key mindfulness-related constructs. This study intended to examine how initial individual and class-level self-regulation impacted the effect of the program on adolescents’ self-compassion. Participants included students from the Inner Strength Education Teen Program (N = 2,121), representing 97 classrooms from six high schools within the Philadelphia City School District. Students participated in a 12-week school-based mindfulness intervention program and completed the Self-compassion Scale-Short Form and the Adolescent Self-Regulation Inventory at pretest (T1) and posttest (T2). After controlling gender and initial self-compassion, at the individual-level, between-person T1 self-regulation significantly predicted individual-level growth in T2 self-compassion. At the classroom-level, T2 self-compassion changed less for students in classrooms with higher average levels of self-regulation at T1 compared to their peers in classrooms with lower average levels of self-regulation at T1. That is, the effect of the program was stronger for classrooms with lower levels of self-regulation at T1. These findings provide evidence that self-regulation at both the individual and classroom levels contributes to heterogeneity in the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based program in promoting self-compassion among adolescents.