Fostering Well-Being over the Radio? An Empirical Study Investigating the Effects of an Audio Podcast-Based Intervention Program on Student Teachers’ Well-Being

Student teachers’ abilities to positively influence their own well-being are an important resource not only for their academic success at university but also for their future impact as educators in schools. Thus, universities should assume responsibility for educating student teachers on how to reflect on and influence their personal well-being. In this paper, an empirical study is presented that investigates the effects of an audio podcast-based intervention on student teachers’ well-being. The online course was developed with the aim of fostering both the general and job-related well-being of student teachers during a 15-week pedagogical field experience. The course comprises a series of nine narrated audio podcast episodes and administers three positive psychological interventions: gratitude, kindness, and savouring. To investigate the effectiveness of the course, a quasi-experimental design was used. Life satisfaction, happiness, teacher engagement, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion were measured using online questionnaires at four intervals over a 15-week period. The sample consisted of 117 German student teachers, of which 82 participated in the intervention and 35 in the control condition. Results suggest small but statistically significant gains in mean life satisfaction and happiness scores of the participants in the intervention group. Furthermore, significant gains in emotional exhaustion in the control group were not present in the intervention condition, suggesting that the course provides a buffer to emotional exhaustion. Against the expectations, indicators of job-related well-being (i.e. teacher engagement, job satisfaction) did not significantly change over time in either group. The relevance and limitations of these findings are discussed. © 2021, The Author(s).