Background

Teacher wellbeing has received widespread and increasing attention over the last decade due to high teacher turnover, growing teacher shortages, and the goal of improving teaching quality and student performance globally. Although a systematic review of teacher wellbeing has been conducted (see Hascher & Waber, 2021), a cumulative assessment of the predictors and their associated significance for teaching wellbeing has never been examined.

Aims

The study aims to systematically examine the relative strength of all predictors and outcomes of teacher wellbeing, focused on primary, secondary, and preservice teachers.

Method

A combination of key terms (e.g., "teacher(s)", "teaching", and "flourish") and spelling variations of "well-being" and "wellbeing" were used to search studies from four databases: PsycINFO, ERIC, Web of Science, and Scopus. All 4,781 studies were assessed for their relevance based on the title and abstract, and fewer than 200 studies were eventually coded by following the PRISMA guidelines. 

Results

The results indicate that factors associated with teacher wellbeing and flourishing can be classified into five dimensions—occupational indicators (e.g., organisational commitment, job demand, and work engagement), personal/individual differences indicators (e.g., personality traits, emotional intelligence, and self-efficacy), interpersonal indicators (e.g., student-teacher relationship and relationship with colleagues), and demographical indicators (e.g., gender and age).

Conclusion

Occupational indicators and personal indicators are the most common factors studied with teacher wellbeing. Further research is recommended to examine other indicators of these two dimensions or explore multiple dimensions in different contexts and teacher characteristics. More research on preservice teachers’ wellbeing is needed.