It has long been suspected that a teacher’s own wellbeing, or lack of it, has a bearing on how students perform in class. The problem, researchers say, is that the evidence for this has been spread across many smaller, disconnected studies, leaving no clear picture of how strong or reliable the link really is.
In the largest synthesis of its kind, researchers from the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education analysed 186 studies published between 1977 and 2023, covering more than 350,000 teachers across 33 countries.
The researchers examined how teacher wellbeing, including job satisfaction, motivation and self-efficacy, and “illbeing”, such as burnout, stress and anxiety, related to students’ academic achievement and motivation.
The study’s findings echo a growing body of research: happier, healthier teachers are linked to students who are more motivated and achieve more.
And the study’s lead, Professor Theresa Dicke, believes the relationship most likely works both ways.
“Well-performing students who are motivated and participate in the classroom will most likely contribute to teachers’ health and wellbeing, their job satisfaction, their motivation, and everything else,” Professor Dicke told The Educator.
‘If we turn one cog, it affects the others’
When asked what the study’s findings mean for existing in-school approaches to student and staff wellbeing, Professor Dicke said while efforts to maintain and expand student wellbeing programs are well-intentioned, they pile more work on top of a profession that is already pushed to the brink.
“We’re putting an additional demand on an already at-risk workforce without thinking about how we protect their health and wellbeing,” Professor Dicke said. “Similarly, there have been some efforts into teacher health and wellbeing, but mostly driven from the perspective of teacher attrition.”
In December 2022, federal, state and territory education ministers agreed to the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan to fix Australia’s teacher shortage by getting more people into teaching, keeping current teachers from quitting, and making the job more respected and less overloaded.
“What they’re forgetting is that the people who need to implement and react to all these changes are our school leaders. They’re also neglected in this hierarchy, because they’re the last group,” she said.
“We already knew teachers’ wellbeing was important, not just because of attrition, but because teacher burnout and wellbeing have increasingly been a focus of research over the past decade. So we thought, what lever can we use? And apparently, that’s student outcomes.”
Professor Dicke said that her study sought to show that teacher wellbeing is not just important in itself, but linked to other crucial factors that impact teaching and learning.
“That’s why it’s so important to take the school as a system into account. Teachers, students, school leaders, school staff, even parents, are a community,” she said. “We often say a school is a microcosm of society, and in the same way, everything within a school is linked. It’s a network rather than a linear thing, and if we turn one cog, it’s going to affect all the others.”
Getting the right people in the same room
Professor Dicke said a meaningful shift in whole-of-school wellbeing can be brought about if all the most important stakeholders in education talk to one another instead of operating in silos.
“When we speak to governments, for example, we’ve noticed that the group responsible for the health and wellbeing of school leaders is different from the one taking care of teachers, which is usually some kind of workforce health and wellbeing group … and that’s a different group again from the one taking care of student wellbeing and performance,” she said.
“Another example of this might be seen with another group somewhere in government conducting the student, teacher and parent surveys that most governments have, and reporting them back, but they don’t necessarily talk to the groups responsible for the strategies.”
Professor Dicke said the Federal Government deserves credit for tackling the student and teacher wellbeing crisis, but could communicate better with the peak bodies representing principals.
“The government groups don’t necessarily talk to the peak bodies representing those groups, and they don’t necessarily talk to the researchers looking into this either,” she said. “That said, we’ve seen the beginnings of bringing these groups together, such as the ASPA National Summit.”
Professor Dicke said something similar, where the people who work with the data and those responsible for these groups come together and start communicating, would be “a major change”.
“Again, when you turn one cog, it affects the others, so we need the people responsible for all these little puzzle pieces to come together and piece the puzzle together,” she said, adding that translating the research is also important.
“When research is published, I usually get responses from teachers and school leaders sharing their stories and lived experiences of how they interpret it, which is beautiful and super important. It’s about taking that and making it into something that lives and breathes and changes policies.”
Professor Dicke said the importance of not looking at these groups as separate cannot be overstated.
“Yes, student wellbeing is important and teacher wellbeing is important, but what’s really important is thinking about them as one thing,” she said. “Of course they have different facets, but they’re not isolated. We can’t just fix one.”
Professor Dicke said relationships across a school can’t be repaired in isolation from one another.
“We have to look at them all together to fix the whole school community, and this means student-teacher relationships, leader-teacher relationships, leader-student relationships, and, of course, parents, who play such a vital role,” she said.
“The important role of parents was not mentioned in this paper, but we’re increasingly looking at this now, and the roles that parents and other groups play together in creating happy and healthy schools, which is the basis for almost everything.”
Professor Dicke said the conversation also keeps missing one critical ingredient: funding.
“Lots of money is being put into infrastructure in Australia, which is extremely important, but if we don’t put any money into education, that will fail at some point.”
The role of educators may need an overhaul
Looking ahead, Professor Dicke said the ever-changing landscape of Australian education means the roles of teachers and principals may need to be reviewed to ensure they remain fit for purpose.
“We need to ask, is the role our teachers and leaders have right now still up to date? In our ever-changing society, do we need those roles to evolve?” Professor Dicke said.
“Instead of just adding and adding, which we’re doing with teachers as well, should we review those roles? Do we need to overhaul the profession of the teacher, of the educator?”
Professor Dicke said that while a large body of research exists on the professional identity of educators, research may need to look beyond this.
“The research could bring professional identity together with the actual needs of what we want from our teachers and what they should be bringing to the table to improve health and wellbeing,” she said. “Right now, it doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve got the student mental health crisis and teachers leaving the profession, so I think there needs to be some fundamental work.”
Professor Dicke said that while many student and teacher wellbeing interventions do work, they are “small Band-Aid fixes”.
“These interventions only work to a certain degree if the context doesn’t change, but it’s the context that needs to be addressed if it’s to have an impact.”