ABSTRACT
Teaching is an intellectually demanding and emotionally charged role which requires high levels of professional knowledge, understanding, and skills. At the heart of the profession is an overwhelming desire to support the successful learning of students in all teaching encounters. These intense experiences usually take place within educational organisations where teachers are called upon to use their specialist knowledge through regular interactions with students and colleagues.
Consequently, teacher well-being is a complex multifaceted construct which has a temporal dimension, as teachers grow over a life course of teaching. Individual teacher well-being is also determined by three layers of contributory factors involving teachers’ perceptions of self and identity, experience of potentially affirming interactions with learners and colleagues which mostly take place within large educational organisational contexts. Educational organistions are also nested within a wider policy and practice context which often deteremines the status of the profession within the wider education system.
