February 2026: Newsletter

This past week, I had the opportunity to speak at the inaugural Transatlantic Well-Being and (Teacher) Education Conference, “Bridging Well-Being and Teacher Education: A Globalised Perspective to Science Diplomacy.” It was energizing to join educators, researchers, and policymakers from around the world, as we explored how to support educator well-being — and address the looming global teacher shortage projected to reach 44 million teachers by 2030 (UNESCO, 2024).

In my talk, I shared how the Center for Reaching & Teaching the Whole Child is working to address this urgent challenge by leveraging and integrating our Framework in teacher preparation and development. Our goal is to ensure educators feel equipped with the skills, mindsets, and practices needed to thrive in the profession while supporting students to thrive as well.

I also highlighted a recent scoping review that I published alongside an amazing team of researchers, which examines the relations between teacher well-being and student well-being and learning.

Our team conducted a comprehensive literature review that yielded 7,629 unique studies; of these, 67 met our inclusion criteria. The findings revealed that research on teacher well-being and its connections to student outcomes has grown significantly over the past two decades, with the largest number of studies published between 2020 and 2022. Notably, over half of the studies (35) were published in just the past five years (2018–2023), highlighting the growing attention to this topic.

We also found that most studies focused on elementary school settings and were conducted in the United States, followed next by Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Additional key findings include:

• Teacher well-being and student well-being: Of the 27 studies examining this relationship, 93% reported positive associations, two found no relationship, and one identified a negative relationship on a single measure.
• Teacher well-being and student learning: Among 49 studies, 84% found a positive relationship, while the remaining eight reported no relationship. No studies found negative relationships.
• Causality remains unclear: No studies examined whether teacher well-being causes student outcomes, or vice versa.
• Inconsistent definitions: Well-being was conceptualized and measured in widely different ways across studies, with no unifying conceptualization for either teacher or student well-being.
• Deficit-based framing: Teacher well-being was most often defined through occupational stress and burnout, while student well-being was frequently framed as psychological distress — suggesting that well-being is still primarily viewed through a deficit lens (see image below).

Overall, the review points to strong relations between teacher well-being and student well-being and learning. At the same time, much more research is needed — particularly across global contexts and for understanding causal mechanisms that underly these relations. This work also raises a fundamental question: What do we mean by well-being, and how do we measure it?

Well-being is not simply the absence of stress or burnout; it also includes the presence of flourishing. Below, I share two definitions of well-being and invite you to reflect: How do you define well-being in your own life and in your work? What supports your well-being?