Emotional Variability and Educator Wellbeing: Evidence from a Semester-Long Study

Recent research suggests that experiencing positive emotions is related to overall wellbeing, and thus, school systems should employ strategies to boost educators’ experiences of 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 fluctuating emotions relate to educator wellbeing over time. This study utilized panel data to examine how 40 U.S. K–12 educators’ extent of 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. Results indicated that the experience of no positive emotions was negatively related to educator wellbeing, while experiencing even some positive emotions predicted substantively higher levels of reported wellbeing over the course of a semester. Classroom teachers, elementary and middle school educators, and less experienced educators were more vulnerable to lower levels of wellbeing when they experienced no positive emotions.