K-12 Educator Wellbeing in a Post-Pandemic Context: The Importance of Regularly Experiencing Some Positive Emotions

Research suggests that positive emotions are related to educators’ wellbeing, and thus, school systems should seek to boost educators’ positive emotions for improved wellbeing. However, most of these studies captured one-time measures linking positive emotions to educator wellbeing, meaning the field lacks knowledge about how discrete, fluctuating emotions relate to educator wellbeing over time. This study utilized panel data to examine how 40 North American K–12 educators’ positive emotions related to their reported wellbeing across the spring 2022 semester and how educators’ professional characteristics interacted with their emotional experiences to predict wellbeing. Teachers most felt tired and most reported feeling no positive emotions across the semester. The experience of no positive emotions was negatively related to educator wellbeing, while experiencing some positive emotions predicted substantively higher levels of reported wellbeing. Classroom teachers were more vulnerable to lower levels of wellbeing when they experienced no positive emotions.