The CompassionED Lab

About the Lab

The CompassionED Lab is a research and impact hub committed to strengthening education systems to support educator wellbeing and enable educators to thrive across their careers.

We focus on system-level strategies that support educator groups experiencing heightened emotional risk, burnout, and compassion fatigue. Rather than framing these challenges as deficits in individual resilience, our work recognises them as outcomes of organisational and cultural conditions within education systems.

Grounded in rigorous evidence and co-design with educators, The CompassionED Lab seeks to generate strategic and applied research, tools, and frameworks to inform policy and practice.

Our aim is to reshape how educator wellbeing is understood and enacted – positioning care for educators as a core business, embedded within everyday systems and decision-making, rather than treated as an optional add-on.

Our vision

Why educator wellbeing matters

Educators are on the frontline of increasingly complex student social, emotional, and learning needs. They routinely carry the weight of student distress, family challenges, and system pressures—often within under-resourced and high-accountability environments.

Research consistently shows that:

• Chronic stress and burnout contribute to educator attrition, presenteeism, and reduced teaching quality
• Compassion fatigue accumulates over time when organisational support systems are weak or absent
• When educators feel psychologically safe, valued, and well supported, student outcomes improve, school climates strengthen, and retention increases

Despite this evidence, many wellbeing initiatives continue to focus on individual-level interventions, such as mindfulness training or resilience workshops. While valuable, these approaches alone are insufficient for sustainable change. The CompassionED Lab responds by prioritising system-level conditions of work, rather than focusing on individual coping capacity.

Our approach

The CompassionED Lab’s program of work is organised around four interconnected areas:

System-level approaches
We investigate how policies, organisational structures and leadership practices shape educator wellbeing, including:

• Workload, role clarity and competing demands
• Reflective practices and consultation structures
• School and system responses to complex student needs
• Equity and compassion-informed approaches at whole-school and system levels

Emotional labour
We examine the emotional demands of caring roles in education, with attention to:

• Experiences of compassion fatigue, burnout and moral distress
• Factors that protect and strengthen compassion, satisfaction and meaning in work
• How reflective practices can buffer emotional load

Equity and diversity
We foreground the experiences of:

• Early-career educators navigating the transition into schools and early childhood settings
• Culturally and linguistically diverse educators and other minoritised groups
• Educators working in high-need or under-resourced contexts

Our work explores intersectional barriers, experiences of belonging, and system-level strategies that support sustainable careers.

Professional status and public narratives
We investigate how public discourse, policy and media shape:

• The professional status of educators
• Community expectations and trust
• Attraction, retention and career sustainability of teachers

This includes work on reframing narratives about teaching and allied education roles to better reflect their expertise, relational labour and societal value.

Who we work with

The CompassionED Lab works closely with:

• Education systems and sectors
• Professional associations
• Mental health and wellbeing organisations
• Schools, early childhood services and specialist clinics

Our work informs:

• Resource development and “uplift” initiatives for pre-service and in-service educators
• System and school policies related to workload, supervision and wellbeing
• Professional learning and leadership development programs
• Advocacy efforts aimed at improving the status and sustainability of educators

We welcome collaborations with:

• Schools and education systems seeking to design, implement or evaluate educator wellbeing initiatives
• Policy and advocacy organisations focused on educator sustainability and systemic reform
• Clinics and services supporting school-based mental health work
• HDR and honours students with interests in educator wellbeing, compassion, workplace equity and inclusion, and driving structural and systemic change to shape the future of the teaching profession

Possible collaboration pathways and projects include:

• Co-designed research and evaluation projects
• Development and evaluation of reflective practice frameworks
• Joint applications for competitive and contract research funding
• Student research projects embedded within partner organisations

To discuss potential collaborations, project ideas, or HDR opportunities with The CompassionED Lab, please contact us at thecompassionedlab@monash.edu

About the team

The CompassionED Lab brings together researchers with expertise in:

• Educational and counselling psychology
• Educator wellbeing and mental health
• Education workforce and systems research
• Equity-informed and compassion-informed practice
• Education, diversity and inclusive practices in education systems

Projects

The CompassionED Lab researchers and partners have been involved in projects such as:

Educator wellbeing evidence reviews

• Rapid and systematic reviews of risk and protective factors for educator wellbeing, and barriers/enablers to implementing wellbeing initiatives in schools and early childhood settings.

Compassion fatigue and sustainability in educators  

• Quantitative, Qualitative and mixed-methods studies examining educators’ emotional labour, vulnerability, reflective practices, and systemic support.

Educator professional status

• Research exploring how teachers and educators understand their professional identity, and strategies to elevate the public standing of the teaching profession.

Equity and educator wellbeing

• Research focused on the experiences of migrant educators and those from culturally diverse and minoritised backgrounds, the structural barriers they face, and how education systems can be redesigned to better support their professional success.