Abstract
In the last 25 years wellbeing education has advocated for the wellbeing and resilience of children and young people in the schooling sector. With this promotion has come multiple policies, programs, approaches and interventions. With varied success, we have observed an increased awareness of the need for wellbeing education in schools. However, less attention has been awarded to the wellbeing of teachers as critical in-school influences on children’s wellbeing, happiness, satisfaction and achievement. Yet recent developments have advanced teacher wellbeing in some countries, particularly during and post the global COVID-19 pandemic, where teachers were acknowledged as front-line workers. This heightened awareness of the importance of the role of teachers in wellbeing and academic pursuits has been further actualised during times of global crisis. And far less attention has been paid to school leaders’ wellbeing, yet they are pivotal in maintaining and sustaining well schools for both teachers and students. With increasing demands being felt on the teaching profession including staff shortages in leadership and teaching, this chapter reinforces the importance of leader and teacher wellbeing and its impact on students’ wellbeing. Global research that has measured and explored the perceptions of staff wellbeing and workload will provide data to validate the important role teachers and leaders have in ensuring all education partners are well: leaders, teachers and children.
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I would like to acknowledge the participants who took part in the studies in this chapter, especially teachers and leaders who completed the research survey during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Ethics approval was given by the University of Adelaide’s Office of Research Ethics, Compliance and Integrity separately for each study: (1) No. H-2018-275; (2) No. H-2020-065; (3) No. H-2020-120; (4) No. H-2020-120 (An ethics approval was granted by an extension of the 2019 study and allocated to the University of Adelaide, H-2019-120).
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McCallum, F. (2023). Well Leaders, Well Teachers, Well Children. In: White, M.A., McCallum, F., Boyle, C. (eds) New Research and Possibilities in Wellbeing Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5609-8_11
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