Towards a model of teacher well-being from a positive emotions perspective

Abstract

Teacher well-being represents a key factor in assuring the quality of learning in terms of both process and outcomes. Despite a growing literature addressing the role of job demands and job resources in teacher well-being, fewer studies have focused on the effect of individual variables. The present paper aims at developing a teacher well-being model using self-efficacy and teaching emotions such as enjoyment of teaching, anger and anxiety to explain the influence of job demands and job resources on teachers’ subjective happiness. A cross-sectional quantitative design was applied to a sample of 1092 Romanian pre-university teachers. The participants completed a self-report questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and structural equations modelling were used to analyse the data. The findings indicate significant paths between the variables included in the model. Thus, job resources have a considerable positive influence on the enjoyment of teaching and the teachers’ subjective happiness, having a more powerful effect than personal resources, namely self-efficacy. In turn, perceived self-efficacy mediates the effect of job demands on teaching emotions and subjective well-being. It is argued that the enjoyment of teaching has a notable effect on teachers’ general well-being.