Reflecting Minds

Development of a mentalization training for elementary educators

Working in elementary education has become increasingly demanding in recent years. High workload, staff shortages, and the diverse needs of young children pose significant challenges for educators. This underscores the importance of teaching future educators how to regulate one’s own emotions and stress and remain sensitive even in challenging situations.

This is where the project “Reflecting Minds” comes in. Mentalizing, which describes the ability to perceive and understand thoughts, feelings, and intentions in oneself and others, is considered an important resource in the pedagogical context. It helps educators cope more effectively with stress and engage in sensitive interactions. Within the project, we developed and evaluated a new mentalization training together with students and teachers acting as citizen scientists at two colleges for early childhood education.

A central component of this training is the observation of a mother–infant dyad, which regularly visits the class and interacts in a natural play situation. Participants are guided to generate hypotheses about the perspectives, feelings, and intentions of both mother and baby, and then jointly reflect on how the interaction affected them personally. Additional exercises further deepen mentalizing skills: meditations and mindfulness practices, guided imagery, structured reflection worksheets, and playful activities that foster perspective-taking and the perception of emotional signals.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the training, we compared three different groups: classes that took part in the mentalization training with interaction observations, classes that received the training without observations, and classes following regular instruction. Standardized questionnaires, video-based interaction observations, as well as qualitative and quantitative interviews were used to capture both measurable changes and personal experiences of the students. The preliminary results are promising: students in both training groups showed greater motivation to engage in mentalizing, and their empathy skills improved significantly. Participants also reported an improved ability to perceive and articulate emotions of themselves and others, and to respond more constructively to stress.

These developments are particularly significant because they suggest that young people can acquire skills already during school that support their own well-being while also contributing to sensitive, mentalizing-oriented care for children. With Reflecting Minds, we not only developed a new and easily implementable training program, but established valuable foundations for further research. The close collaboration with the citizen scientists was a key success factor and demonstrates how enriching participatory research can be in educational settings. The insights and materials developed in the project offer a promising starting point for embedding mentalization-focused training in early childhood education and professional development.

This project is already completed.