Perfectionism literacy among teachers and trainee teachers: Evaluating the use of a short educational video

Perfectionism is related to mental health and wellbeing issues in teachers and students. One way of helping prevent harmful perfectionism related issues arising is to increase perfectionism literacy among teachers. That is, what teachers know about perfectionism, its features, risks, and where support can be found if needed. This knowledge may help prevent problems for themselves and also help them support their students. In support of this possibility, a recent measure of perfectionism literacy has been developed, termed the Perfectionism Literacy Questionnaire, which assesses knowledge of multidimensional trait perfectionism (Etherson et al., 2025). In support of its use, evidence was found among community adults that it is distinct from perfectionism (i.e., being perfectionistic is not the same as knowing about perfectionism) and perfectionism literacy is related to help-seeking behaviours, generally. In addition, some initial evidence was provided that perfectionism literacy can be increased using a cheap, scalable intervention - a short educational video. In the current study, we build on this initial research by examining the effectiveness of the same educational video on perfectionism literacy levels in teachers and trainee teachers.