The relationship between teachers’ critical thinking, experiences of victimization in educational institutions, and psychological well-being

Introduction Teacher victimization is a growing concern with well-documented implications for educators’ psychological well-being. However, less is known about how such experiences relate not only to emotional outcomes but also to critical thinking. This study aimed to examine the associations between different forms of teacher victimization (e.g., physical, social, verbal, and cyber), psychological well-being (flourishing, positive and negative emotions), and critical thinking. Methods Data from 1,044 Lithuanian teachers were collected via an online survey. Victimization, critical thinking, and psychological well-being were measured with validated scales, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to test their interrelationships. Model fit was evaluated using standard indices. Results Physical, social, verbal, and cyber victimization were significantly associated with lower psychological well-being. Verbal victimization showed the strongest links, with moderate negative correlations with flourishing (rs = −0.23) and positive emotions (rs = −0.25), and a positive correlation with negative emotions (rs = 0.32, all p < 0.001). Social victimization showed similar patterns. Unexpectedly, victimization was weakly but positively related to critical thinking ( β = 0.07). Higher critical thinking, in turn, predicted lower psychological distress ( β ≈ −0.27). Mediation analysis indicated a small but significant indirect effect ( β ≈ −0.02), demonstrating that critical thinking partially mediated the association between victimization and psychological well-being. Discussion The findings confirm that teacher victimization adversely affects psychological well-being. At the same time, critical thinking emerged as a meaningful cognitive mechanism: although slightly elevated by victimization, it was associated with lower ill-being, producing a small indirect effect. These findings indicate that critical thinking may play a modest explanatory role in how victimization relates to teachers’ psychological functioning.