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Compassion in educational psychology practice

I have been working with compassion focussed approaches for about five years. However I have been interacting with the ideas of compassion since I was a young child and applying them throughout my early career

While I had been using Compassion Focussed Approaches while I was working as an Educational Psychologist (EP) – I hadn’t brought the two things together explicitly, until now. This feels very exciting, because 2025 will be my year of thinking about how EPs can relate to and use Compassion Focused Approaches.

This article will cover:

  • The definition of compassion
  • How compassion relates to EP practice 
  • An overview of the development of a compassion focussed supervision model

Defining compassion

The definition of compassion I use is adapted from the work of Professor Paul Gilbert:

“the awareness of suffering and the commitment to relieve or prevent it” 

Gilbert, 2009

I find this definition useful for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is action oriented, highlighting the importance of improving situations. Secondly, it articulates the grittiness and difficulty which can come with compassion. In popular discourse, compassion can be associated with softness or fluffiness. However, getting up close and personal with suffering can be hard. Working in a caring profession, where it is your job to work with suffering, day in day out, that can be very hard. 

How compassion relates to the work of EPs

Gilbert’s definition of compassion matches the focus of caring professionals closely: consider our colleagues in health care, social care, education and the charity sectors and the way that they can work with distress and suffering. It got me thinking about the role of an Educational Psychologist specifically.

How might the activities we complete daily fit into this two part definition? For example, gaining a child or young person’s views could be interpreted as gaining an ‘awareness of [their] suffering’ or the difficulties they’re experiencing at school. Providing recommendations to school could be interpreted as ‘commitment to relieve or prevent’ suffering, by envisioning a more positive way forward.

Developing a compassion focussed supervision model for senior leaders in school

One way I have incorporated compassion focused approaches into my work is on a systemic level. Over the last five years I have co-developed a compassion focussed supervision model called Compassion Focussed Coaching (CFC) (Heriot-Maitland & Taylor, 2024).

Compassion Focused Coaching brings together familiar processes of supervision like containment, connection and challenge (Kennedy et al, 2018) and combines them with tools and models from Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT; Gilbert, 2009). 

Compassion Focused Therapy is an evolution-informed approach that aims to understand the bio-psycho-social processes which shape our wellbeing. It focuses on the patterns in our brains that influence our social roles and relationships. CFT helps people to identify their emotional drives, understand when their threat-based responses are active, and to shift towards patterns of care and connection. 

Compassionate Mind Training (CMT; Irons & Heriot-Maitland, 2021) is a key element of Compassion Focused Therapy. CMT helps individuals activate and train their compassion, motives and mentalities. Compassionate Mind Training started as a therapeutic process, but has since been adapted for lots of contexts and groups, including the general population.

So far, the Compassion Focused Coaching has been delivered as group supervision, with fortnightly or monthly sessions. As a model its distinguishing features are:

  • Supervisors help to create the conditions for reflection using grounding practices, visualisation, and imagery.
  • Supervisions involve modelling, noticing, and practising the giving and receiving of compassion.
  • Supervisees are supported to consider the three directions that compassion can flow in, when discussing agenda items (self-other, other-self and self-self; Gilbert et al, 2017).
  • Supervisors undergo CFC training so they can help supervisees to explore compassion within their systemic professional contexts. 

Evaluating Compassion Focused Coaching: implications for practice

Charlie Heriot-Maitland and I detailed the development process, delivery, and evaluation of Compassion Focused Coaching in a recent publication (Heriot-Maitland & Taylor, 2024). Here are three key findings from the research and reflections on takeaway implications for practitioners:

Compassion Focusing Coaching was valuable

We delivered the programme across three cohorts of senior leaders, over three years. One participant commented:

the biggest impact for me was on my own responses to challenging behaviour in school… conversations really helped me to reflect on what my emotions were in the situation, what the child might have been communicating… Also, I have grown in confidence in terms of being able to support colleagues in those conversations, particularly in my line management role” (Heriot-Maitland & Taylor, 2024, p12).

Heriot-Maitland & Taylor, 2024, pg. 12

CFC was developed using theory which has been strongly supported by previous research and receiving feedback from a range of leaders, across settings and locations, helped us to know that the approach was useful and worth sharing with the EP community.

Multi-disciplinary success, manuals and supervision

Compassion focused coaching was considered to have impact, even when delivered by a range of professionals, when supported by supervision and a manual. The facilitation team at the time of writing included a Clinical Psychologist, two Educational Psychologists and an Educational Psychotherapist.

Together we developed a Compassion Focused Coaching manual to help scaffold delivery. This now means that we are confident in sharing CFC as a model for the broader practitioner community to use, when providing supervision or facilitating a reflective space. It feels important to note that in my career as an EP, when I have collaborated with professionals from other disciplines, great things have happened.

Increasing the ability to give and receive compassion

Participants reported that CFC contributed to increased levels of resilience, increased ability to give and receive compassion in their work, and increased ability to understand and navigate challenging behaviour. It feels incredibly exciting to have data which shows that participants experienced perceived increases across specific areas. It shows what might be achieved when practitioners directly incorporate compassion focussed approaches into their working lives.

Overall, I am excited to see how Compassion Focused Coaching develops and would welcome thoughts and ideas from the community to support its dissemination.


If you are interested in learning more, Jo is hosting two workshops:


References

Gilbert, P. (2009). Introducing compassion-focused therapy. Advances in psychiatric treatment, 15(3), 199-208. Retrieved from http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/15/3/199.full.pdf

Gilbert, P., Catarino, F., Duarte, C., Matos, M., Kolts, R., Stubbs, J., Ceresatto, L., Duarte, J., Pinto-Gouveia, J., & Basran, J., (2017) The development of compassionate engagement and action scales for self and others. Journal of Compassionate Healthcare. 4(4) DOI 10.1186/s40639-017-0033-3

Heriot-Maitland C, Taylor J. Developing a Compassion Focused Supervision Model for Senior Leaders in Education. OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine 2024; 9(2): 033; doi:10.21926/obm.icm.2402033

Irons, C., & Heriot-Maitland, C. (2021). Compassionate Mind Training: An 8-week group for the general public. Psychol Psychother, 94(3), 443-463. doi:10.1111/papt.12320

Kennedy, E. K., Keaney, C., Shaldon, C., & Canagaratnam, M. (2018). A relational model of supervision for applied psychology practice: professional growth through relating and reflecting. Educational Psychology in Practice, 34(3), 282–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/02667363.2018.1456407



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