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

Abstract

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.

Teachers’ Health: How General, Mental and Functional Health Indicators Compare to Other Employees? A Large French Population-Based Study

“…Finally, our results are based on French pre-pandemic data and generalizability is not a matter of course. Given the heterogeneity in teachers’ sociodemographic and cultural backgrounds across countries [ 58 , 59 ], cross-cultural studies are needed to expand the view on teacher health around the world. Furthermore, the present analysis applies to a time before the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

The Importance of the School Functioning as an Organization and Teachers’ Work-Related Well-Being for Teachers’ Organizational Commitment

“…Be to, mokytojai pabrėžia pasitikėjimo mokyklos vadovu reikšmę ir teigia, kad tai didina saugumą dėl darbo (Hendriks et al, 2020). Tyrėjai pastebi, kad kuo komunikacija mokykloje geresnė, tuo mokytojų pasitenkinimas darbu yra didesnis (Billaudeau et al, 2022), o nesaugumas dėl darbo -mažesnis (Saeed et al, 2021). Komunikacijos organizacijoje kokybė prognozuoja mokytojų pasitenkinimą darbu, o šis siejasi su mokytojų įsipareigojimu organizacijai (De Nobile, 2017).…”

The multifaceted challenges of teaching from home: A study of schoolteachers' well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Further, recent literature reviews on well‐being indicated that the majority of the discussions centered around work‐related individual and contextual factors, particularly the need for social relationships and a positive work atmosphere (Billaudeau et al, 2022; Hascher & Waber, 2021). However, the drastic transition in the way teaching occurred during the COVID‐19 pandemic indicated that several additional significant factors stemming from the challenges of teaching online and working remotely from home (L. E. Robinson et al, 2022) were significant contributors to high stress and lower well‐being.…”