Teachers’ Psychological Characteristics: Do They Matter for Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers’ Well-being, Retention, and Interpersonal Relations? An Integrative Review

Abstract

This integrative review aims to render a systematic account of the role that teachers’ psychological characteristics, such as their motivation and personality, play for critical outcomes in terms of teacher effectiveness, teachers’ well-being, retention, and positive interpersonal relations with multiple stakeholders (e.g., students, parents, principals, colleagues). We first summarize and evaluate the available evidence on relations between psychological characteristics and these outcomes derived in existing research syntheses (meta-analyses, systematic reviews). We then discuss implications of the findings regarding the eight identified psychological characteristics—self-efficacy, causal attributions, expectations, personality, enthusiasm, emotional intelligence, emotional labor, and mindfulness—for research and educational practice. In terms of practical recommendations, we focus on teacher selection and the design of future professional development activities as areas that particularly profit from a profound understanding of the relative importance of different psychological teacher characteristics in facilitating adaptive outcomes.

Development of Chinese College English Teachers’ Psychological Empowerment Scale: A Validation Study

“…Within the teacher’s community of practice, the interpersonal relationship is critical to teachers’ judgment of their status, which was mainly embodied as whether the colleagues would speak highly of them (0.65), or hold a positive attitude toward their performance (0.72), or whether the colleagues accept, appreciate, respect or support them (0.70). Though it is a bit different from the findings by Bardach et al (2021) where psychological characteristics matter much to teacher’s interpersonal relations, the essence is similar because status in the interpersonal relationship establish proportionately to the content of the teacher’s psychological empowerment. Therefore, college English teachers’ positive perception of their status would stimulate and thus be transferred into the psychological power which would help build the positive and upward relationship and attitudes for their professional development.…”

Retención docente a través de la teoría de demandas y recursos laborales

“…Por otro lado, variables personales entre las que se incluyen variables sociodemográficas, actitudinales y/o recursos personales. Así, los recursos personales del profesorado se constituyen como un elemento clave para explicar las variaciones en los niveles de bienestar, satisfacción laboral e intención de abandono de la profesión (Bardach et al, 2022;Extremera et al, 2019a;Granziera et al, 2021).…”

“…Uno de esos recursos personales con vinculación con el bienestar personal y laboral se relaciona con la habilidad para procesar la información emocional que experimentan las personas (Mayer et al, 2016), lo cual ha dado lugar al desarrollo de un marco teórico sobre el concepto de Inteligencia Emocional (IE) y sus aplicaciones a diversos campos, entre ellos, el contexto docente (Extremera et al, 2019a). El trabajo en contacto directo con el alumnado, las interacciones con las familias, las relaciones con el profesorado y los niveles de exigencia mental y emocional de las actividades desempeñadas explican la centralidad de la persona y de sus emociones en este contexto (Bardach et al, 2022;Oliveira et al, 2021).…”

“…En una revisión se ha informado de que la IE se relaciona positivamente con diversos indicadores de desempeño y de retención docente (Bardach et al, 2022). Sin embargo, resulta necesario desarrollar estudios integradores que aporten una visión más comprehensiva de la relación de la IE con indicadores laborales positivos atendiendo a otros factores contextuales como las demandas y los recursos laborales.…”

Toward Environmental Sustainability, Health, and Equity: How the Psychological Characteristics of College Students Are Reflected in Understanding Sustainable Development Goals

“…SE transforms the research results of sustainability science into educational practices and guides the choice of learning objectives, relevant content, and appropriate learning and teaching methods [22]. Psychological characteristics are considered to be one of the cornerstones of effective teaching [23]; they encapsulate a complex set of attitudes, interests, motivations and self-efficacy [24,25]. There is currently a lack of research on the psychological characteristics of university students with respect to the SDGs.…”