How college professors can support students’ psychological well-being — ASN Events
  1. Schedule
  2. Podium - Wellbeing and Early Education, Teacher and Professor Wellbeing
  3. How college professors can support students’ psychological well-being

How college professors can support students’ psychological well-being (#261)

Rachel Baumsteiger 1
  1. Cal Poly Pomona, Alhambra, CA, United States

 Background

College students tend to experience particularly high levels of stress (Duffy, 2019). Therefore, it is important to investigate how to support their psychological well-being (PWB). Professors are well-poised to support students because they interact with them regularly across relatively long periods of time. Although there is ample research on college teaching practices that promote students’ learning (e.g., Svinicki & McKeachie, 2014) and teaching practices that support students' PWB within K-12 settings (e.g., Van Ryzin et al., 2009), there is little research on how college professors can support students’ PWB (Eisenberg et al., 2013).

Aims

 The purpose of this study was to investigate teaching practices that college professors could use to support students’ psychological well-being.

Method

To explore this, a series of college student focus groups (N = 26) were conducted to identify teaching practices that students perceive as supportive them in experiencing pleasant feelings, feelings of connectedness, a sense of autonomy, a sense of meaning/purpose, and feelings of accomplishment and growth/development. These topics correspond to major dimensions of well-being defined in the literature on human flourishing (e.g., Colby & Morton, 2017; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Keys, 1998; Ryff, 1989; Seligman, 2012).

Results

Analyses of the responses uncovered several themes. For example, students reported that they feel a greater sense of connection with professors who recognize (out loud) that students face challenges outside of class; students experience greater personal growth when professors encourage students to share their perspectives, even if they are not fully-formed or polished; and, students find classes to be more meaningful when content was connected to “real world” events, especially when they had opportunities to learn about the perspectives of people different from themselves.

Conclusion

Based on these findings, we provide a list of recommended teaching practices that professors can use to support students’ well-being. We also discuss directions for future research on this topic.

  1. Svinicki, M. D., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
  2. Van Ryzin, M. J., Gravely, A. A., & Roseth, C. J. (2009). Autonomy, belongingness, and engagement in school as contributors to adolescent psychological well-being. Journal of youth and adolescence, 38(1), 1-12.
  3. Eisenberg, D., Hunt, J., & Speer, N. (2013). Mental health in American colleges and universities: Variation across student subgroups and across campuses. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 201(1), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e31827ab077
  4. Colby, A., & Morton, E. (2017). Seven life goods: Purpose and well-being in later life. Paper presented at the Association for Moral Education 43rd Annual Conference.
  5. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.
  6. Keyes, C. L. M. (1998). Social well-being. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61, 121-140.
  7. Ryff, C. D. (1989). In the eye of the beholder: Views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 4, 195-210.
  8. Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. New York, NY: The Free Press.
  • Please select up to 3 keywords from the following list to best describe your submission content: Education, Meaning and Purpose, Relationships
#IPPAWorldCongress