Brief Cognitive-behavioral Intervention for Teachers' Work-Related Stress: A Discussion Paper on Recruitment and Engagement Issues

Abstract

This paper discussed the introduction of a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong to manage their work-related stress. Core ideas of the program were introduced to a class of 99 secondary school teachers who attended a course for professional development. Upon receiving positive feedback, the full program was designed and pilot-tested. Since this was a preventive intervention taking the universal target approach, many targeted teachers might not perceive the need of managing stress. Therefore, the enrolment was slow and a number of barriers were encountered during the process of participants’ recruitment. A variety of promotional efforts was used to attract interested parties. Although the program was promising that many teachers showed interest, not many of them were able to commit the time to participate. Finally, recruitment was done with the collaboration of school principals and the intervention was refined to a one-day program upon their requests. The issues of participant recruitment and engagement were discussed. The lessons learnt from the development and launching this short preventive intervention provided useful insights in Hong Kong for designing better program and more effect recruitment strategies in the future for this type of study and intervention.