Understanding the Factors Affecting Teachers’ Well-being in Harmony with the Leadership Practices: A Study Among Teachers at a Private School in Dubai

Abstract

In the education field, well-being becomes very important to both teachers as well as students. Lots of schools create a department that specifically cares about their employees’ well-being. As teachers’ well-being is one of the main concerns for the KHDA, it is very important to understand the factors that affect teachers’ well-being, thus this study has been conducted in one of Dubai’s private schools to understand what effects a teacher’s well-being, as well as find out the practices implemented by the senior leaders to maintain positive well-being which leave its impacts on students’ well-being as well. This study aims to find out how teachers’ well-being in one of Dubai’s private schools is affected by different factors such as: leadership and management, job satisfaction, organizational culture, teamwork, relationships, pay and benefits, and the work environment, and understand which practices leadership implement in order to increase their faculty’s well-being. Scholars around the world agree that teachers are the basic foundation in the education field, yet few studies have discussed the ways to build the environment needed for teachers to stay healthy with a positive well-being and less stress and burnout. The participants of the study consist of 65 teachers, of different nationalities, males and females, teaching from Kindergarten up to Grade 12 students, who answered the well-being questionnaire of 39 questions, and a principal and a vice principal of the same school who were interviewed. A mixed method approach was used following the pragmatic research paradigm. The quantitative method was applied through using a survey of 39 questions filled by the teachers, while the qualitative method was applied through an interview with two senior leaders from the same school. Data analysis of the well-being questionnaire has shown that most teachers were satisfied with their leadership and had a healthy lifestyle. However, they were inflicted with stress and burnout due to an overload of work, deadlines, and sudden tasks. The interviews with the principal and vice principal found that the senior leaders emphasize teamwork and listen to teachers’ complaints and work hard to remove all obstacles they meet. The limitation of the study consists of the small sample size who answered the survey, limited number of teachers, and the generalization of the survey questions, along with the limited number of interviewees. The research paper used the theoretical framework that includes the social cognitive, subjective well-being, self - determination, economic welfare theories and other related theories to the study to analyze the factors that impact teachers’ wellbeing from other studies’ theories. A focus on the role of leadership practices that implement teachers’ well- being positively in the study shows how those practices helped teachers to live a healthy lifestyle and be satisfied about the school management through the results analyzed from both the questionnaire and the interviews done. The main issues that affects teachers’ well-being negatively were the salaries and benefits that don’t meet their performance in addition to the workload.