<b>Teachers’ well-being: challenges and possibilities for increasing job satisfaction

Abstract

Current article investigates the factors associated to job satisfaction and the strategies that produce and maintain teachers’ well-being. It aims at analyzing how teachers build their happiness at work. The theoretical model of analysis is based on several authors, including Argyle, Csikszentmihalyi, Diener, Warr and Walton. Two data collecting procedures were employed: a questionnaire applied to 250 teachers from state schools, and interviews using the technique of focal groups. The study allowed the identification of the degree of satisfaction of the teachers with multiple aspects of their work, the relation between those aspects and their self-perception of happiness, and the coping strategies used in situations of dissatisfaction and conflict at school. Analyses indicate that teachers’ well-being is the positive result of the cognitive and affective assessment that teachers make of themselves and of the existing conditions for the accomplishment of their labor activities. It is a process that requires effort on the teacher’s part and working conditions that reward such investments.