Self-Compassion Among K-12 Music Educators

The purpose of this study was to explore self-compassion among K-12 music educators. Our sample consisted of 139 practicing K-12 music educators across the United States. Participants completed a modified version of the Self-Compassion Scale Long Form (Neff et al., 2021), which measured both positive (self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness) and negative (self-judgment, isolation, over-identification) aspects of self-compassion (Neff, 2003). Through one-way ANOVAs, we found significant differences between teaching experience and participants' scores for mindfulness, overidentification, self-judgment, isolation, and their overall self-compassion scores. We also discovered significant differences between age, over-identification, self-judgment, grade level taught, common humanity, and isolation.