Occupational well-being

Occupational well-being is crucial for mental and physical health and has a significant influence on professional practice and job retention. Occupational well-being includes positive and negative emotions as well as job satisfaction. People with a high level of professional well-being...

• experience positive emotions such as joy in relation to their work.
• are satisfied with their work and would choose the teaching profession again if they could.
• experience negative emotions such as anger and tension less frequently. They do not suffer from burnout symptoms, i.e. they do not feel chronically exhausted by their work, nor do they feel increasingly cynical towards students or unable to cope with the demands of their job.

How important is well-being for professional practice?

Various theoretical perspectives shed light on motivational, social and cognitive consequences of low occupational well-being in terms of burnout symptoms (cf. Fredrickson, 2001; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Maslach and Leiter (1999) and Jennings and Greenberg (2009) postulate that the quality of interaction between teachers and students is particularly impaired by burnout symptoms. Our research provided initial empirical evidence to support these assumptions and show an association between teachers' emotional exhaustion and instructional quality as well as student motivation and performance (Klusmann et al., 2008; Klusmann et al., 2014; Klusmann et al., 2016; Klusmann et al., 2021).

Which factors determine short- and long-term development processes of occupational well-being?

As determinants of well-being we examine stable personal resources of teachers, such as their professional competence and personality, as well as the specific areas of activity that are experienced as stress-relevant, based on the Job-Demands-Resources Model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) and the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In empirical studies we could show that professional competence, but also personal characteristics of teachers are systematically related to their professional well-being (Klusmann et al., 2012; Roloff et al., 2022).

We regularly conduct diary studies based on Almeida's stress model (2005) to learn more about teachers' everyday experiences and short-term variation in their well-being. In these studies teachers report their daily positive and negative experiences and their well-being over a period of several weeks. There were clear fluctuations in well-being from day to day; the everyday stressors were primarily of a social nature (Aldrup et al., 2017; Schmidt et al., 2017).

Currently, we are investigating the long-term development perspective as part of a DFG project (COACTIV-ExpeRt). We are looking at how professional well-being changes in the first 10 years of work life and to what extent later exhaustion or dissatisfaction with the professional situation can possibly be predicted from the very beginning of teachers’ professional careers. Early career teachers in the COACTIV traineeship study, surveyed from 2007 to 2009 on key aspects of professional competence, personality traits and learning opportunities during their internship, will be examined again. The participants now have an average of 10 years of professional experience. Aspects of professional competence, professional well-being and various indicators of professional success are again recorded in several partial studies.

What can be done to develop and implement sustainable interventions to strengthen professional well-being?

The professional demands on teachers are high and can (at times) lead to reduced professional well-being. Various prevention and intervention services now exist to strengthen well-being and individual strengths. We are developing interventions based on existing, scientifically sound and evaluated program modules specifically tailored to the challenges of the teaching profession as part of a current project (SchuMaS). Strategies and techniques for regulating stress and emotions, mindfulness, relaxation and distancing oneself from professional issues, communication in conflict situations and cooperation with parents and students are taught and tested based on individual assessments. These and other interventions will be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness and, in particular, their sustainability.