Towards a Model of Teacher Well-Being from a Positive Emotions Perspective

Systematic review of teacher well-being research during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction

The COVID-19 period posed great challenges to global education systems, especially teachers even after lock-down. Teachers' wellbeing has been a concern because they have to balance health with work. Since the role of teachers is pivotal in education, there is increased in research on their wellbeing status.

Method

The current systematic review aims to analyze the distribution of research on teacher wellbeing from 2020 to mid-February 2024 using a quantitative method. It focuses on yearly distribution of studies, the research methods adopted by scholars, and the group of teachers investigated over the period. The PRISMA guidelines were followed, and 103 empirical studies were selected for the analysis.

Results

The review shows notable increase in research, particularly in 2022 and 2023, representing 37.9% and 35.9% of studies, respectively. This suggests a growing interest in teacher wellbeing among educational researchers. The findings also indicate that researchers mostly adopted quantitative methods in form of surveys (79.6%) for studies on teacher wellbeing. However, there has been an increase in qualitative and mixed-methods research recently, with qualitative research accounting for 9.7% and mixed-method research accounting for 10.7%. The review also identified a greater focus on teachers in general than on specific group of teachers.

Predicting Teaching Enjoyment from Teachers' Perceived School Climate, Self-Efficacy, and Psychological Wellbeing at Work: EFL Teachers

We tested an assessment model, by which teacher self-efficacy, perceived school climate, and psychological wellbeing at work, might predict teaching enjoyment. We invited a convenience sample of 355 teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) to respond to four online questionnaires. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to check the scales' construct validity and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test associations among the variables. Our results showed that teacher self-efficacy, perceived school-climate, and psychological wellbeing were direct predictors of foreign language teaching-enjoyment (FLTE). Teacher self-efficacy affected FLTE indirectly, as induced by psychological well-being. School climate also indirectly influenced FLTE, as mediated by teacher self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing, with school climate a direct predictor of teacher self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing. Teacher self-efficacy directly affected psychological wellbeing. We discuss implications of these findings for teacher-education programs.

A model of teacher enthusiasm, teacher self-efficacy, grit, and teacher well-being among English as a foreign language teachers

Introduction

This study aimed to investigate the relationship among teacher enthusiasm and teacher self-efficacy, grit, and teacher psychological well-being among Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers.

Methods

A sample of 553 Chinese EFL teachers completed self-report measures of teacher enthusiasm, teacher self-efficacy, grit, and teacher psychological well-being. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to confirm the validity of the scales, and structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model.

Results

The results indicated that teacher self-efficacy and grit were positively associated with teacher psychological well-being, providing support for the importance of these teacher characteristics in promoting teacher well-being. Furthermore, teacher enthusiasm was found to have an indirect effect on teacher psychological well-being through the mediation of teacher grit, providing evidence for the importance of teacher motivation and engagement in promoting teacher well-being. The partial mediation model was found to be the best fitting model.

Discussion

These findings have important implications for the development of interventions and programs aimed at promoting teacher well-being in the context of EFL teaching.

Teachers' Innovative Work Behavior as a Function of Self-Efficacy, Burnout, and Irrational Beliefs: A Structural Equation Model

Teachers' innovative work behavior (TIWB) is crucial in the contemporary demanding educational environments for overcoming any commonplace issues and to ensure sustainability and development. It refers to a process in which the employee tries to create new ideas, adopt them, apply them in the school context, and then communicate them to other members of the organization in order to achieve a communal benefit. Among a plethora of factors that could influence such behavior, self-efficacy, burnout, and irrational beliefs have been proposed as potential covariates. In the present study, the associations of the above constructs with TIWB are concomitantly investigated by employing structural equation modeling (SEM). Data were taken from the participation of in-service teachers (N = 964) in primary education via self-reported questionnaires. The proposed SEM model exhibited a satisfactory goodness-of-fit to the empirical data, highlighting the direct effects of the independent variables on TIWB, while mediation analysis showed that irrational beliefs and burnout act also as mediators between self-efficacy and innovative work behavior. The findings are in line with previous reports and are interpretable in the context of modern theories, while a discussion on theoretical and practical implications along with emerging ideas and perspectives for further research is provided.

Assessing the determinants of teachers' job happiness in the private universities

Teachers' job happiness in private universities is an important element for the healthy and orderly development of universities and an inevitable requirement for the construction of university faculty, and it has become a hot topic of research in the field of private higher education at present. However, there is still a lack of empirical studies on the factors influencing job happiness in private universities. This study constructs a theoretical model between professional identity, job competence, professional motivation, professional prospects, perceived fairness, job achievements and job happiness, and explores the specific drivers of teachers' job happiness in private universities based on empirical research. The results of the data analysis showed that professional identity, job competence, professional prospects, perceived fairness, job achievements, and professional motivation all had significant effects on teachers' job happiness, and the effects were decreasing. This study examined the effects of job happiness in practice in private universities, which helped private universities to enhance teachers' professional identity, strengthen organizational support for teacher development, promote teachers' teaching ability, improve job competence, and build a developmental teacher evaluation mechanism.

Influence of job environment on the online teaching anxiety of college teachers in the online teaching context: The mediating role of subjective well-being

Background

Online education has been conducted widely in higher education in recent years. While online teaching brings many opportunities, it also poses numerous challenges and issues. This is especially true for college teachers, for whom teaching is considered to be a profession with a high level of burnout and anxiety. The large-scale application of online teaching methods has put teachers in an even more challenging context, which may lead to teaching anxiety affecting their mental health. In online teaching contexts, the question of what factors affect college teachers' online teaching anxiety is worth exploring to help reduce their online teaching anxiety so as to promote their work performance. In this study, therefore, we conducted a survey of college teachers to develop a model of job environment (job demands and job resources), subjective well-being, and online teaching anxiety, and to explore the influences of job environment and subjective well-being on their online teaching anxiety, as well as the mediating effects of subjective well-being between job environments and online teaching anxiety.

Method

Of the 1,060 college teachers who participated, 524 were male (49.4%) and 536 were female (50.6%). An online questionnaire was sent to the teachers in January, 2022. Online teaching anxiety, subjective well-being, and job environment scales were adapted and developed. Descriptive analysis, reliability and validity analysis, and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the collected data.

Results

The study model showed an adequate fit (χ² = 440.983, RMSEA = 0.070, GFI = 0.942, AGFI = 0.914, NFI = 0.949, and CFI = 0.956), confirming the relationships of job demands and online teaching anxiety (β = 0.310, p < 0.001), job resources and online teaching anxiety (β = - 0.086, p < 0.01), job demands and subjective well-being (β = - 0.411, p < 0.001), job resources and subjective well-being (β = 0.204, p < 0.001), and subjective well-being and online teaching anxiety (β = - 0.435, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the results also proved the effects of the mediating role of subjective well-being between job demands (95% CI = [- 0.138, - 0.225]), job resources (95% CI = [- 0.119, - 0.064]), and online teaching anxiety. The model accounted for 33.8% (f ² = 0.401) of online teaching anxiety.

Conclusion

The results of this study indicated that it is important to reduce job demands and increase job resources to alleviate college teachers' online teaching anxiety to maintain good mental health; while maintaining a high level of college teachers' subjective well-being is also helpful for promoting their work performance. Furthermore, the indirect effects of job demands and job resources on online teaching anxiety mediated by college teachers' subjective well-being were also significant.

What Levers to Promote Teachers’ Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond: Lessons Learned from a 2021 Online Study in Six Countries

To highlight effective levers to promote teachers’ wellbeing worldwide, particularly during difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated work-related factors associated with teacher wellbeing, across borders and cultures. In six countries/territories, we examined the factors that were most consistently and strongly associated with two indicators of wellbeing at work: (i) job satisfaction; and (ii) work/life balance, and three indicators of general wellbeing: (i) subjective health; (ii) mental health; and (iii) life satisfaction. Between May and July 2021, after 18 months of the pandemic, 8000 teachers answered the first edition of the International Barometer of Education Personnel’s Health and Wellbeing (I-BEST): 3646 teachers from France, 2349 from Québec, 1268 from Belgium, 302 from Morocco, 222 from The Gambia, and 215 from Mexico. For each country/territory and each wellbeing indicator, we used a forward stepwise regression procedure to identify important determinants among a carefully selected set of 31 sociodemographic, private, and professional life factors. Aside from healthcare access, the factors most consistently and strongly associated with teacher wellbeing in France, Québec and Belgium (samples whose size were ≥1000) were related to the psychosocial and the organizational dimensions of work, namely: feeling of safety at school, autonomy at work, and the quality of relationships with superiors and quality of relationships with students. In the smaller samples of teachers from the three remaining countries (Morocco, The Gambia and Mexico), exploratory analyses showed that the feeling of safety and autonomy at work were, there too, consistently associated with wellbeing indicators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the factors most consistently associated with teachers’ wellbeing across countries were related to security and autonomy at work, supporting the importance to consider these aspects in a continuous, structural way at school. Factors associated with teachers’ wellbeing in very different contexts require further cross-cultural study.

Emotions, Illness Symptoms, and Job Satisfaction among Kindergarten Teachers: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion

Kindergarten teachers’ emotions are an essential factor in their physical and psychological wellbeing. Previous studies mainly focused on the relationship between kindergarten teachers’ emotions and their students’ emotions while ignoring the important relationships between kindergarten teachers’ emotions and their own wellbeing (e.g., teachers’ health, job satisfaction, burnout). Therefore, this study explores teacher emotions as predictor variables, illness symptoms, and job satisfaction as criterion variables, and emotional exhaustion as a mediator. In total, 1997 kindergarten teachers completed the Teacher’s Emotion Scale, the Occupational Emotional Exhaustion Scale, the Illness Symptoms Scale, and the Job Satisfaction Scale. Results revealed that enjoyment negatively predicted illness symptoms and positively predicted job satisfaction via the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. The opposite relationships were found with anger, also confirming the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Anxiety positively predicted illness symptoms, completely mediated by emotional exhaustion, but no relationship was found with job satisfaction. The function of emotions in teachers’ physical and mental health, implications for kindergartens’ research and practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The Analysis of Mathematics Academic Burden for Primary School Students Based on PISA Data Analysis

To explore the impact of academic burden on the physical and mental health of primary school students, combined with the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report in 2018, the relationship among the development of mathematical literacy, mathematics academic burden, and the physical and mental health of primary school students is studied. First, the relationship between mathematical literacy and mathematics anxiety is analyzed, and related influencing factors and measurement methods of mathematics anxiety are introduced. A questionnaire is then designed for primary school students' mathematical stress, and the reliability and validity of the designed questionnaire are tested. Finally, a questionnaire survey is conducted on students, parents, and teachers in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of three standardized public primary schools. The results of the questionnaire survey show that students, teachers, and parents have a general understanding of the mathematics academic burden of primary school students at this stage. A total of 70% of teachers believe that primary school students have a heavy mathematics burden; 50% of parents think that primary school students are under heavy academic stress; 70% of primary school students believe that the heavy mathematics burden leads to reduced sleep time and extracurricular activities, which has a serious impact on the physical and mental health of primary school students. This research provides a reference for improving the current balance between education and students' physical and mental health in China.