The Heart of the Classroom

Growing international problem of teacher attrition seriously undermines quality and stability in education. Contemporary education requirements, along with the emotional labor of teaching, take a heavy toll on educators, resulting in burnout and dissatisfaction. In recognition of that, there is an increasing appreciation that teachers' social-emotional well-being (SEWB) is neither a supporting afterthought nor an ancillary consideration, but a primary consideration among their bases for resilience, professional competence, and their eventual choice to stay in the calling. It is proposed here that providing for teachers' SEWB is an important step towards a stable and successful education workforce. To offer a concise definition of teachers' social-emotional well-being and its defining relationship with teacher retention, this chapter seeks to present a cohesive conceptual framework depicting how SEWB directly and indirectly impacts work enjoyment, effectiveness, and future commitment. We agree with Jennings and Greenberg (2009) that social-emotional well-being refers to the ability to be positive. We position teachers' social-emotional well-being (SEWB) as an under-considered but critical teaching retention predictor. Instead of burnout being posited as individual failure, we argue that SEWB is predicted by systemic moderators, administrative support, workload intensity, and school culture and has direct effects with mediators such as work life balance, self-efficacy, and professional learning. In addition, we will introduce particular propositions to inform future empirical investigation, review systemic costs of ignoring teacher SEWB, and present practical, evidence-based interventions at individual, school-based, and central office levels to cultivate well-being as a strategic tactic to boost teacher retention. The goal of this chapter is to present a brief, comprehensive conceptualization of teacher SEWB as a central variable responsible for the problem of teacher retention. The aim is to bring forward a convincing theoretical justification for prioritizing teacher SEWB with support from a novel conceptual framework as well as specific research propositions. We foresee that this chapter to be a useful document for school leaders/administrators, policymakers, researchers, as well as teacher preparation programs, to stimulate additional discussion as well as empirical investigation. Ultimately, this chapter will present practical and operational recommendations for creating school environments to adequately support the “heart of the classroom” to yield a more stable as well as effective teaching force.