Patricia A. Jennings

Professor of Education

• Ph.D. University of California Davis, 2004
• M.Ed. Saint Mary's College, 1980
• B.A. Antioch College, 1977

Patricia (Tish) Jennings is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education and Professor of Education at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Her research places a specific emphasis on teacher stress and how it impacts the social and emotional context of the classroom, as articulated in her highly cited theoretical article "The Prosocial Classroom." Jennings led the team that developed CARE, a mindfulness-based professional development program shown to significantly improve teacher well-being, classroom interactions and student engagement in the largest randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention designed specifically to address teacher occupational stress. She is a co-author of Flourish: The Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health and physical education program and is co-Investigator on a large randomized controlled trial to evaluate the curriculum’s efficacy. She is currently the Principal Investigator of Project CATALYZE, a study that will examine whether CARE enhances the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning curriculum funded by an Education Innovation Research grant from the US Department of Education to conduct. A member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth, she was awarded the Cathy Kerr Award for Courageous and Compassionate Science by the Mind & Life Institute in 2018 and recently recognized by Mindful Magazine as one of "Ten Mindfulness Researchers You Should Know." Earlier in her career, Jennings spent more than 22 years as a teacher, school director and teacher educator. She is the author numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters and several books: Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom, The Trauma-Sensitive School: Building Resilience with Compassionate Teaching, Mindfulness in the Pre-K-5 Classroom: Helping Students Stress Less and Learn More, part of Social and Emotional Learning Solutions, a book series by WW Norton of which she is editor. Her latest book, Teacher Burnout Turnaround: Strategies for Empowered Teachers, was released in December 2020.

• Program Area
• Research Centers
• Research Labs