This chapter highlights the importance of teacher and staff wellbeing as a critical determinant in the achievement of positive social and academic learning outcomes. Even as teachers attempt to prepare students for academic success, instil core academic skills, and prepare them for an unknown future, they also must navigate the many mental health challenges that students present. Strategies for supporting teacher wellbeing and implications for the future are discussed. As the demands of the job and the school year accumulate, crowded classrooms, heavy workloads, and the ongoing emotional and physical needs of students can lead to distress, exhaustion, or burnout among educators. But they can give school leaders the illusion that they’re doing enough to improve teachers’ working conditions, offering “perfect self-care moments” to fuel teachers up before they return to the classroom focused and refreshed.
- As teachers, we all have received little notes of gratitude from our students.
- Although the literature agrees that teacher wellbeing is a multidimensional construct, this does not appear to be reflected in current research.
- Meaningful interactions with students and colleagues when it is clear that I have had an impact.
- In light of the findings of this systematic review, three important recommendations for the future development of research on teacher wellbeing are offered here.
Make Educator Well-Being a Priority Now
However, Fraillon (2014) emphasised that there remains a lack of specificity around notions of wellbeing; while it is essential to consider, monitor, and respond to wellbeing, there is little sector-wide consensus on what it actually is. In turn, this influences relationships with parents and attitudes towards innovation. Coleman (2009) aptly noted that “schools are communities containing not just children and young people, but adults as well”. They also contribute to the academic development of their students.
All of the 61 studies that were reviewed met at least one of the teacher wellbeing approaches, but some met two (16+3+8) or even three (6). Thus, with this review, we provide important information in order to address teacher wellbeing at a fundamental and critical level. For instance, according to Viac and Fraser (2020), cognitive wellbeing refers to the range of skills and abilities teachers need to perform effectively, which includes self-efficacy, while McCallum et al.’s (2017) review identifies self-efficacy as a factor impacting https://www.wnit.org/educationcounts/e/march-30th-2022.html teacher wellbeing. Conducting systematic reviews for specific educational settings (like Acton and Glasgow, 2015) is valuable but examining teacher wellbeing in a comprehensive way is also needed. These studies examined teachers’ wellbeing with a particular emphasis on flourishing in educational settings. There are other reviews in the literature that focus on a specific group of teachers or a specific context in order to give a deeper insight into teacher wellbeing.
Summary and Interpretation of Findings
Of staff say employees with mental health issues are not well supported Become a supporter for as little as $1 a week – it only takes a minute and enables us to continue to provide research-informed content for teachers that is free, high-quality and independent. Therewill be variations in the wellbeing strategies that are the most appropriate,or most effective, for different teachers at different times. Teacher-self-efficacy has been linked to wellbeing, teacher performance,and student outcomes, and can be influenced by leadership practices such as ashared sense of direction, modelling behavior, and rewarding good work. Teacher learning is also implicated in buildingself-efficacy (people’s belief that they can reach their goals or achieve tasks)and teacher identity (teachers’ beliefs about themselves as professionals). Promoting teacherlearning may also help to reduce teacher attrition, as research has found that earlycareer teachers are less likely to leave schools where leaders focus oncreating the culture and conditions that encourage teacher learningx 10.
To assess this construct, researchers commonly employed scales that measured job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion/burnout (e.g., studies 8, 25, and 29). The teacher sample sizes in the reviewed studies range from five to 47,315 participants (see Table 1). In total, data were collected from more than 76,990 teachers, although some of the included studies did not specify the exact number of participating teachers. For example, when teachers smile at their students, the students are—due to the behavioral reflex of mimicry—likely to smile back. Conversely, teachers who experience more negative emotions in the workplace will be less likely to actively engage in relationships, will stick to familiar methods and routines and will struggle to deal with unforeseen obstacles. Generally, this theory posits that teachers can better and more successfully meet the demands of their jobs if they are able to take advantage of the appropriate resources.
