Social Psychology of Education (2023) 26:811–831

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09768-0

Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective

well-being to high-school and university students’ physical
and mental health in a three-level longitudinal study

Zselyke Pap1 · Laurentiu Maricuțoiu1 · Delia Vîrgă1 · Marian Ilie2,3 ·

Velibor Mladenovici3 · Bianca Popescu1 · Daniela Valache3

Received: 22 June 2022 / Accepted: 26 January 2023 / Published online: 6 February 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023

Abstract
This study focused on the relationships between teachers’ subjective well-being,
perceived teacher support and students’ subjective mental and physical health. We
surveyed students at the beginning, halfway, and at the end of the second semes-
ter, collecting 1230 observations clustered within 410 students. Additionally, 66
of their teachers rated their subjective well-being (teaching self-efficacy and life
satisfaction) at the beginning of the semester. We used multilevel modeling to link
teachers’ subjective well-being to students’ health and perceived teacher support,
controlling for the effects of time. Teaching self-efficacy positively predicted stu-
dents’ mental health. Moreover, perceived teacher support had a positive association
with both subjective physical and mental health reported by students across the se-
mester. We found inconclusive results in testing the associations between teachers’
subjective well-being and perceived teacher support. We also found non-significant
associations between teaching self-efficacy and students’ physical health, as well as
life satisfaction and students’ mental health.

Keywords Student health · Perceived teacher support · Teacher self-efficacy ·

Teacher life satisfaction · Multilevel

Laurentiu Maricuțoiu
[email protected]

1
Department of Psychology, West University of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania
2
Department of Teacher Training, West University of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania
3
Center of Academic Development, West University of Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania

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812 Z. Pap et al.

1 Introduction

Recent re-conceptualizations of education expanded the role of the teacher from

merely developing knowledge to contributing to the development of students’ social
and emotional skills and to maintaining student well-being (Braun et al., 2020; Jen-
nings & Greenberg, 2009). This perspective has placed teachers on the front line of
sustaining and preserving the physical and mental health of their students (Denny
et al., 2011). Aligned with this direction, global theories of student well-being, such
as the Prosocial Classroom Model (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009) emphasize the
importance of teachers’ occupational health and well-being in explaining and main-
taining students’ well-being (Braun et al., 2020). According to this theory, teachers’
well-being and socio-emotional competence are associated with student well-being
through (1) the development of supportive teacher-student relationships, (2) effective
classroom management strategies, and (3) the role model of desired social and emo-
tional behavior that the teacher represents for his/her students (Jennings & Green-
berg, 2009). Through these mechanisms, teachers’ subjective well-being (SWB)
becomes an important piece in the dynamics of student health and SWB (Braun et
al., 2020; Harding et al., 2019).
The current literature on this topic focused on the quality of student-teacher rela-
tionships, which connects teachers’ SWB to student outcomes (Jennings & Green-
berg, 2009). In this study, we have collected student reports of perceived teachers
support (PTS), following the definition of teacher support as the degree of emotional
and instrumental help offered by the teacher (Federici & Skaalvik, 2014). Previ-
ous research suggested that PTS is an essential resource in the educational setting
(Plenty et al., 2014). Empirical investigations concluded that students who feel that
their teachers are involved and care for their well-being are also more engaged and
motivated (Pap et al., 2021), experience better mental health (Conner et al., 2014;
Mizuta et al., 2016) and physical health (Dudovitz et al., 2016). However, most of
this research focused mainly on younger students, and we know relatively less about
the nature and effects of supportive student-teacher relationships in higher educa-
tion. Hagenauer and Volet (2014) argued that research on this relationship should be
extended to university settings, where it is a greatly understudied topic with great
potential in understanding how supportive professors can influence a wide range of
student outcomes.
Surprisingly, we also have limited knowledge about the ways teachers’ SWB
relates to students’ perceptions of their teachers’ supportiveness (Phillippo & Stone,
2013), and even less about its relations to students’ subjective health and well-being
(Braun et al., 2020). Most of the research conducted so far has adopted a cross-
sectional approach which does not assess the evolution of students’ well-being during
the semester or the factors that can explain this evolution. Although recent research
suggested that students experience a decrease in well-being as the semester unfolds
(Maricuțoiu & Sulea, 2020), little is known about how these evolutions are associated
with PTS or with teachers’ SWB.

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1.1 The role of teacher well-being in predicting student health

Teachers’ SWB has become an important point of investigation in understanding stu-

dents’ well-being, as emphasised by a recent systematic literature review by Madigan
and Kim (2021), who reported relationships between teachers’ burnout is related to
students’ SWB. According to the Prosocial Classroom Model (Jennings & Green-
berg, 2009), teacher well-being can influence student outcomes not only through its’
influence over the classroom environment but also through the role model of social
and emotional behavior that teachers represent. When teachers are unsatisfied or lack
self-efficacy, they are not only less capable of creating a learning environment that is
warm and welcoming for students, but students absorb and mirror the negative physi-
cal and emotional reactions that such teachers express during instruction (Braun et
al., 2020; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Sinclair & Ryan, 1987).
In the present study, we followed widely acknowledged perspectives of subjec-
tive well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001) conceptualizing teachers’ SWB as having two
fundamental components: hedonism (i.e., the subjective experience of happiness and
life satisfaction), and eudaimonia (i.e., positive mental health and self-realisation).
In their seminal work, Ryan and Deci (2001) described hedonism through a focus on
happiness, in terms of experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain. They conceptualized
eudaimonia as the degree to which a person is fully functioning through being auton-
omous, competent, and having meaningful relationships with others. This approach
to investigating SWB among teachers and employees at large has been embraced by
several studies not only at the advent of Ryan and Deci’s theory but also by more
recent work (i.e., Capone & Petrillo 2020; Czerw, 2019; Harding et al., 2019).
We approached teachers’ life satisfaction from the perspective advanced by Diener
(2000), who defined it as a cognitive process of assessing the quality of life based
on personal criteria. Contrary to great attention paid to the ways life satisfaction and
generally being happy relates to work performance and positive relations at the work-
place (Erdogan et al., 2005), the effects of teachers’ life satisfaction on the way they
relate to, and influence students, have been greatly understudied (Braun et al., 2020).
We believe that the current literature holds some complementary results that have
not been connected yet in empirical research. On the one hand, research indicated
that students outperform their peers in terms of their yearly academic achievement
when their teachers experience high life satisfaction (Duckworth et al., 2009). On the
other hand, achievement has been cross-sectionally linked to physical health among
students both in adolescence (Wade et al., 2000), and in higher education (Ong et
al., 2021). The possible link between teachers’ life satisfaction and student health
can also be inferred from the Prosocial Classroom Model (Jennings & Greenberg,
2009), which postulated that students follow the role model of social and emotional
competence that teachers represent. Hence, when students interact with teachers who
express happiness and contentment with life, they also are likely to follow this model
and feel more satisfied. In turn, higher life satisfaction among students has been asso-
ciated with better physical health indices (Zullig et al., 2005). The existing empirical
investigations directly linking teachers’ life satisfaction to student outcomes yields
a rather incomplete view. While Duckworth and colleagues (2009) have reported
significant associations to achievement, Braun and colleagues (2020) did not find an

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association between teachers’ life satisfaction and the development of elementary

school-children’s emotional well-being, but found a significant effect on increased
prosocial behaviors within the classroom.
Teaching self-efficacy (TSE; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy 2001) taps into teach-
ers’ beliefs in their ability to design, organize and implement instructional activities
with success, representing the positive relationships and competency components
of eudaimonia (Ryan & Deci, 2001). TSE has plenty of known implications for
the quality of instruction (Zee & Koomen, 2016), and for the quality of teacher-
student relationships (Phillippo & Stone, 2013). Although the importance of TSE
is well-established in improving various aspects of the teaching process (Künsting
et al., 2016; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001), there is a limited number of studies
that connects TSE to student well-being (Zee & Koomen, 2016). In our view, TSE
could have an impact on students’ mental health through the well-directed and clear
goal structure, well-defined expectations, and calm handling of difficult situations
in the classroom (Künsting et al., 2016). Although a recent review concluded that
TSE could influence student psychological well-being and academic adjustment in
lower educational levels (Zee & Koomen, 2016), research in higher educational con-
texts is almost completely missing on this topic. The existing evidence suggest that
older students also feel more anxious during classes where they perceive that their
teachers struggle with anxiety and low efficacy (Sinclair & Ryan, 1987). Moreover,
teachers with TSE are more successful in creating well-organized, clearly structured
and autonomy supportive learning environments in which students’ achievement and
health can thrive in (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Zee & Koomen, 2016). When
students feel that their teachers allow them control over aspects of their activity and
provide clear explanations regarding the processes behind achieving goals, students
reported better physical health and emotional functioning (Tilga et al., 2020). Fur-
thermore, students with higher grades tend to choose healthier options in a wide
range of behaviors, such as lower alcohol consumption, healthier eating habits, fol-
lowing healthy sleeping recommendations, and less smoking (Ong et al., 2021).
While these results can represent a starting point to establish some hypotheses, they
mostly stem from observed associations in cross-sectional studies, in the most part
conducted with younger students. The Prosocial Classroom Model itself is mostly
oriented towards explaining phenomena that we know from studying young children
(Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Empirical evidence from early educational stages up
to high-school converged to the conclusion that schools with the highest levels of
teacher SWB have students with lower levels of depressive symptoms (Denny et al.,
2011). Research from secondary schools showed that increased SWB among teachers
was associated with higher well-being and less psychological distress among students
(Harding et al., 2019). In the higher educational context, existing empirical evidence
is scarce. In an early study, Sinclair and Ryan (1987) found that teachers’ high anxiety
before a lecture had a significant impact on students’ anxiety during the lecture and
on students’ ratings of teacher affect, confidence, and teaching effectiveness after the
lecture. To the best of our knowledge, this topic was not previously studied on univer-
sity students. Therefore, more evidence is warranted to better understand how these
constructs relate to each other across different moments in time, and if they also hold
true as students get older and pursue higher educational stages.

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1.2 The role of teacher SWB in predicting perceived teacher support

Within the Prosocial Classroom Model (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009), teachers’
SWB is theorized to have a direct effect on the degree of supportiveness that is cre-
ated in the learning environment. Within this model, teachers who are well-adjusted
and demonstrate high social-emotional competence, are better equipped to respond to
students’ struggles with a warm and supportive approach. Students perceive teachers
to be supportive primarily when they use diverse and best practice teaching strate-
gies, acknowledge and boost students’ academic success, demonstrate fairness during
interactions with students, and foster a classroom environment in which questions are
encouraged (Suldo et al., 2009). In order to meet these needs, a teacher must believe
in his/her ability to effectively manage the classroom environment, including student
misbehaviour, helping students learn and develop, and involving them in the learning
process in a meaningful way (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). Empirical evidence
shows that highly self-efficacious teachers create a warm classroom environment
characterized by responsiveness, enthusiasm, and supportiveness (Zee & Koomen,
2016), with a positive orientation towards mastery goals and better-quality instruc-
tional practices (Künsting et al., 2016; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001).
Life satisfaction and the positive attitude that comes with it can also influence
teachers’ supportiveness, since it impacts effectiveness especially in jobs that require
interacting with others (Erdogan et al., 2012). Being associated with the experience
and expression of positive emotions, life satisfaction is potentially an underrated
antecedent of positive outcomes at the classroom and student level (Braun et al.,
2020). Individuals who are happier in life form attachments to others by treating oth-
ers better (Erdogan et al., 2012). Meta-analytic results indicate that happy employees
perform better at their job, being more creative, dependable, going beyond their for-
mal requirements to help others, and building supportive relationships (Lyubomirsky
et al., 2005). In the school context, these aspects can contribute to students’ percep-
tions of a teacher as one who does not only teaching them at high standards, but also
is warm, supportive, and cares about others (Duckworth et al., 2009).

1.3 Perceived teacher support and students’ subjective health

Students tend to identify and appreciate the ways teachers are involved with them
and care for their well-being (Suldo et al., 2009). Within the Prosocial Classroom
(Jennings & Greenberg, 2009), supportive teacher-student relationships contribute to
a better-quality classroom climate, creating an environment where students develop
healthy motivation towards learning and school. This resonates with the rationale of
Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci 2001), asserting that PTS contributes
to students’ health by satisfying the basic needs for relatedness (e.g., students feel
that the teacher cares about their well-being and makes an effort to connect to them),
and competence (e.g., students get better results and grow as a result of personalized
instructional support).
The available cross-sectional evidence from high-school suggests that PTS is
associated with less physical health-risk behaviors among students like drug and
alcohol use and suicidal ideation (Dudovitz et al., 2016). These can lead to enhanced

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physical health among students who feel supported by their teachers (Conner et al.,
2014). Laftman and colleagues (2021) also reported a significant link between higher
PTS and better physical health among secondary and high-school students. In terms
of mental health, previous research has linked PTS to students’ internalizing prob-
lems (Conner et al., 2014), depressive symptoms (Mizuta et al., 2016), anxiety and
self-esteem (Wit et al., 2011) and negative affect (Suldo et al., 2009). Overall, a large
number of cross-sectional studies in secondary school and high-school have consis-
tently shown that students who perceive that their teachers care for their well-being
(i.e. are supportive), or have an adult confidant within the school, experience less aca-
demic anxiety, internalizing symptoms and physical health problems (Conner et al.,
2014). While these studies constitute a valuable knowledge base on the health bene-
fits of PTS, there is a lack of longitudinal and multisource evidence from high school
(all measures usually been reported by students or teachers, not both), together with a
more severe lack of any kind of evidence from higher education (Hagenauer & Volet,
2014). In one recent longitudinal research, Pap and colleagues (2021) included both
high-school and university students in a semester-long investigation. They showed
that students at both levels, who reported higher PTS at the beginning of the semester,
have also reported higher study-related well-being (i.e., engagement, burnout, and
boredom) at the end of the semester.

2 The present study

This study aims to offer responses to three main research questions derived from the
above reviewed literature:

1. Is teachers’ SWB related to students’ subjective mental and physical health across
the semester?
2. Is teachers’ SWB related to their degree of supportiveness, as perceived by stu-
dents across the semester?
3. Is PTS connected to high-school and university students’ mental and physical
health reports across the semester?

The specific hypotheses based on the reviewed theoretical and empirical work on this
topic state the following:
H1: Teachers’ self-efficacy (H1a) and life satisfaction (H1b) at the beginning of
the semester, will predict students’ subjective mental health during the semester.
H2: Teachers’ self-efficacy (H2a) and life satisfaction (H2b) at the beginning of
the semester, will predict students’ subjective physical health during the semester.
H3: Teachers’ self-efficacy (H3a) and life satisfaction (H3b) will predict students’
perceptions of teacher support during the semester.
H4: Perceived teacher support during the semester predicts higher student reported
mental (H4a) and physical health (H4b) during the semester.
To answer these questions, we investigated the associations between teachers’
SWB and students’ self-reported mental and physical health across 3 measurement
occasions during a semester (i.e., at the beginning, halfway, and at the end of the

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Table 1 Characteristics of the student samples

High-school sample (N = 200)
Study domain Total
Mathematics and informatics Natural Sciences Humanities
Gender Male 32 31 9 72
Female 25 65 38 128
Grade 9th grade 30 28 26 84
10th grade 27 68 21 116
Undergraduate sample (N = 210)
Psychology Educational sciences Social Work
Gender Male 19 2 1 22
Female 86 66 36 188
Study year 1st year - 68 31 99
2nd year 16 - 6 22
3rd year 89 - 3 89

second semester) in a student sample composed of high-school and university stu-

dents. In addition, we investigated the evolution of PTS across the semester and
tested its association to teachers’ SWB reported at the beginning of the semester. We
expected teachers’ SWB to predict higher PTS, even when the effects of time (i.e.,
the moment in the semester) are accounted for. Finally, we tested if PTS is related to
students’ subjective health reports. We considered previous academic achievement as
a potential variable to control, given that this has been linked to higher SWB among
students (Steinmayr et al., 2016). Because our student sample was composed of both
high-school and university students to aid the generalizability of the results, we also
kept educational level under control in our models, to account for the potential effect
of differing educational stages.

3 Method

3.1 Sample characteristics

The samples were recruited in two Romanian high-schools and a university, in a

large city in the Western area of the country. The undergraduate sample included 210
participants (89.5% women, mean age of 20 years, SD = 2.09 years). They were in the
first (47.1%), second (10.5%) and third year (42.4%) of their studies, in three major
domains of the social sciences: Psychology (50%), Educational Sciences (31.9%),
and Social Work (18.1%). The undergraduate students were nested in 5 study groups
(e.g., Educational Sciences, 2nd year in Psychology, 1st year in Social Work).
The high-school sample included 200 students (64% women, mean age of 15.8
years, SD = 0.76 years) that were nested in 9 study groups (i.e., classrooms). They
were in 9th (42%), and 10th (58%) grade, studying one of three study profiles: Math-
ematics and Informatics (28.5%), Natural Sciences (48%), and Humanities (23.5%).
The sample was drawn from the 9th and 10th grades in order to avoid significant
confounding variables that would have been present in the 11th and 12th grades. Since
in the later years of high-school Romanian students face the pressure of preparing

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for standardised national evaluations that can impact their further career trajectories,
we expected that there would be differences in their subjective health that are closely
connected to the stress of this stage in their education. Therefore, sampling from
grades that do not face these specific stressors aids the generalizability of our results,
by excluding sources of strain that are present only in specific years of study.
The teacher sample (N = 66) included 26 academics (65.4% female) and 40 high-
school teachers (70% female). Mean age was 40 years (SD = 7.37) among the aca-
demics, and 45.9 years (SD = 10.13) among high-school teachers. On average, each
teacher included in the present study interacted with 2 study groups.

3.2 Procedure

We collected data in three moments: at the beginning of the second semester (T1; late
February), midsemester (T2; April), and at the end of the semester (T3; beginning of
June). In total, this yielded a nested data structure with 3 levels: 1230 multiple mea-
surements (L1) nested within 410 students (L2), and students nested within 14 study
groups (L3). Teachers and academics completed the questionnaires only at T1, and
their individual data were aggregated at the level of the study group. For each of the
14 clusters, we computed the average values of their teacher variables.
We obtained the agreement of the high school headmasters to collect data, and
several teachers helped in the process of administering questionnaires during regular
class hours. In the University, the study was approved by the dean of the Faculty of
Social Sciences and Psychology. Teachers from each department within the faculty
offered support to collect the data during classes and completed the teacher question-
naire themselves. Participation was completely voluntary, and confidentiality was
assured through self-identifiable codes.

3.3 Measures

Student-level measures included physical health, mental health, perceived teachers’

support, and self-reported grade-point average.
Physical health was measured with the four-item General Health Scale from the
SF-36 Health Survey (Ware, 1999). An example item is: “My health is excellent.”
Answers were given on a 5-point scale to 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree),
higher values representing better physical health. Cronbach’s α value across the three
waves was 0.76, 0.78, 0.81.
Mental health was measured with the five-item MHI-5 screening test (Berwick
et al., 1991). The scale taps into general mental states of psychological calm vs.
unrest, and enduring sadness vs. cheerfulness. A positively formulated example item
is: “During the past month, how much of the time have you felt calm and peaceful?”
An example of a negatively formulated item is: “During the past month, how much
of the time have you felt demoralized and sad?”. Answers were given on a 6-point
scale from 1 (never) to 6 (always); items 1, 3 and 5 were reverse-scored, hence higher
values represent better mental health). Cronbach’s α values in the student data were
0.46, 0.68, 0.69 in the three waves. Both health scales have been previously used in
Romanian studies (e.g., Bălăceanu et al., 2021).

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Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 819

Perceived teacher’support was assessed with 5 items (Van Veldhoven & Meij-
man, 1994) that measure instrumental support (e.g., “If necessary, can you ask your
teacher for help?“), and emotional support (e.g., “Do you feel appreciated by your
teachers?”) evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always). The scale
has been adapted to the educational context and has been used in previous Romanian
research (Pap et al., 2021). Cronbach’s α values across the three measurements were
0.83, 0.86., 0.89.
Grade-point average (GPA) was self-reported. In the demographics section of the
questionnaire, each student was asked to report their GPA from the previous semes-
ter. This information was used to statistically control any potential effect of individual
differences in academic achievement.
Teacher-level measures included life satisfaction and teaching self-efficacy, and
data was collected at the beginning of the semester. Life satisfaction was measured
using five items developed by Diener et al. (1985). An example item is: “I am satis-
fied with my life”. Responses were given on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Cronbach’s α value is 0.84.
Teaching self-efficacy was assessed with 12 items of the Ohio State teacher effi-
cacy scale (OSTES, Tschannen-Moran & Hoy 2001), which is a multidimensional
scale that includes efficacy for instructional strategies (e.g. “To what extent can you
craft good questions for your students?”), efficacy for classroom management (e.g.
“How much can you do to calm a student who is disruptive or noisy?”), and effi-
cacy for student engagement (e.g. “How much can you do to help your students
value learning?”). Responses were given on a 9-point scale from 1 (totally disagree)
to 9 (totally agree). We used an overall teaching self-efficacy score that had an excel-
lent internal consistency (α = 0.92).

3.4 Analytical approach

First, we conducted preliminary analyses to determine whether our predictors are sig-
nificantly associated with our criteria. These preliminary analyses involved estimating
single-predictor models (i.e., one model for each predictor), in which we estimated
the association between each candidate predictor and each outcome. This analysis
yielded unstandardized covariance coefficients and their standard errors (Table 4), all
estimated after taking into account the 3-level nature of our dataset. Based on these
analyses, only significant predictors were used in our subsequent analyses.
Because we used a longitudinal design in which students were nested in classes,
we conducted multi-level analyses using the HLM software (Raudenbush et al.,
2004). The first level (L1) was represented by the repeated measures nested within
students, at the second level (L2) we estimated variability across students in our
outcomes, and at the third level (L3) we specified the predictors at the cluster-level
(i.e., the averaged teacher variables, education level). We built a separate model for
each outcome: perceived teacher support, student mental health, and student physi-
cal health. We used full maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors,
and we introduced variables from different levels in three consecutive steps of model
building. In the first step of each analysis, we estimated a null model (i.e., a model
without predictors) to gauge the degree of shared variance in the outcomes.

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Table 2 Descriptive statistics and scale reliabilities of study variables

Beginning of the Mid-semester End of semester ICC
semester
M (SD) α M (SD) α M (SD) α
Students
Mental health 3.70 (0.84) 0.46 3.87 (0.96) 0.68 3.86 (0.96) 0.69 0.047
Physical health 3.69 (0.77) 0.76 3.65 (0.82) 0.78 3.71 (0.87) 0.81 0.033
Perceived teacher support 3.49 (0.81) 0.83 3.37 (0.84) 0.86 3.30 (0.90) 0.89 0.197
GPA 8.95 (0.84)
Teachers
Life satisfaction 5.25 (0.86) 0.77
Teaching self-efficacy 7.21 (0.90) 0.92
Note. N High school = 200, N University = 210, NTeachers = 66

In the models predicting students’ mental and physical health, in the second step
we introduced L1 predictors: time and PTS. This step could clarify whether PTS is
associated to student health outcomes, beyond the effect of time. In the third step,
we introduced the cross-level direct effect of the teacher-level variables (L3) on the
intercepts, testing the associations between teachers’ SWB and student health. The
last model, with PTS as outcome, was built similarly: we have modelled the effect of
time at L1 in the second step, and the effects of teachers’ SWB (L3) in the third step.
The equations detailing the models can be consulted in the Supplementary Material
that is associated with this manuscript.
Since teacher-level effects are the core focus of our models, all predictors were
centered around the grand mean (Brincks et al., 2017), and time was centered around
the first measurement moment. To determine effect sizes, we calculated pseudo-
R² (Snijders & Bosker, 2012) to estimate incremental variance explained by add-
ing parameters to previous models, and ICCs to determine variability accounted by
teacher effects and inter-individual differences across students (Lorah, 2018). The
improvement in model fit was tested by a chi-squared (χ2) difference test using the
log-likelihood.

4 Results

Means, standard deviations, and scale reliabilities across all three measurement
points are summarized in Table 2, and bivariate Pearson correlations at L1 and L3 are
summarized in Table 3.
Table 4 displays zero-order relationships between study outcomes and candidate
predictors (i.e., multilevel covariance coefficients between our outcomes and each
predictor). These results suggested that our three outcomes had different patterns
of evolution throughout the semester: students’ mental health seemed to improve
(B = 0.079, SE = 0.025, p < .01), perceived teacher support seemed to decrease
(B = -0.096, SE = 0.018, p < .01), while students’ physical health did not change sig-
nificantly (B = 0.006, SE = 0.020, p = .76). GPA was not significantly associated with
any of our outcomes, therefore we did not include it in our following analyses.

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Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 821

Table 3 Bivariate correlations among focal study variables at Level 1 and Level 3
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
1. Gender -
2. Student mental health .01 - .54* .66* .53 .64* .50
3. Student physical health .15** .34*** - .23*** .73** .19 .77**
4. Perceived teacher support -.06 .22*** .23*** - .82*** .62* .93***
5. Teacher life satisfaction - .49 .80**
6. Teaching self-efficacy - .48
7. Educational level -
Note. Teacher-level (L3) correlations are displayed over the main diagonal. NL1 = 1230; NL3 = 14;
Educational level was binary: High-school – 0, University – 1. Gender: Male – 0, Female – 1; ***p < .001,
**p < .01, *p < .05

Table 4 Zero-order relationships between study outcomes and candidate predictors

Students’ mental Students’ physical Perceived
health health teacher support
Within-students predictors
Measurement moment 0.079** (0.025) 0.006 (0.020) − 0.096**
(0.018)
Teacher support 0.191** (0.033) 0.153** (0.028) -
Between-students predictors
GPA (previous semester) 0.011 (0.046) 0.014 (0.034) 0.054 (0.045)
Between-classes predictors
Teachers’ life satisfaction 0.370 (0.216) 0.407** (0.081) 0.972** (0.147)
Teaching self-efficacy 0.673** (0.196) 0.103 (0.217) 1.013* (0.351)
Education level (0 – high school; 0.235 (0.130) 0.319** (0.069) 0.755** (0.105)
1 – university)

Regarding teacher-level variables, our preliminary analyses also indicated differ-

ent patterns of associations: teachers’ life satisfaction was significantly associated
with students’ physical health (B = 0.407, SE = 0.081, p < .01) and perceived teacher
support (B = 0.972, SE = 0.147, p < .01), while teachers’ self-efficacy was significantly
associated with students’ mental health (B = 0.673, SE = 0.196, p < .01) and perceived
teacher support (B = 1.013, SE = 0.351, p < .01). Finally, we found that, university stu-
dents reported higher levels of physical health (B = 0.319, SE = 0.069, p < .01) and
perceived teacher support (B = 0.673, SE = 0.196, p < .01), as compared to high school
students. Based on these results, we considered in the main analyses only the predic-
tors that showed significant associations with student outcomes.

4.1 Relationships between teachers’ SWB and students’ subjective health

Results for the models with student’s mental and physical health as outcomes
are synthesized in Table 5. Regarding our first hypothesis, we found that stu-
dents’ subjective mental health was positively predicted by their teachers’ self-
efficacy (γ001 = 0.48, SE = 0.17, p < .01, in support for H1a). We did not find a
significant zero-order relationship between students’ subjective mental health

13
822 Z. Pap et al.

and their teachers’ life satisfaction in the initial analyses (B = 0.37, SE = 0.27,
p = .17), thereby we did not model this association further, considering H1b
rejected. In addition to these results, in the main analyses we found that stu-
dents’ subjective mental health did not evolve significantly during the semester
(γ100 = 0.10, SE = 0.06, p = .94).

Hypotheses regarding students’ subjective physical health (i.e., H2a and H2b), were
both rejected. We did not find a significant zero-order relationship between TSE and
students’ physical health (B = 0.10, SE = 0.22, p = .65, rejecting H2a), hence we did
not model this predictor beyond the test for initial associations. While teachers’ life
satisfaction initially showed a significant zero-order relationship to students’ physical
health, when we modelled it alongside PTS (at L1) and educational level (at L3), it
yielded a non-significant estimate (γ001 = 0.02, SE = 0.14, p = .88, rejecting H2b).

4.2 PTS as predictor of students’ mental and physical health reports

The models presented in Table 5 also provided results regarding the within-student
relationship between PTS and health outcomes. Perceived teacher support was a sig-
nificant predictor of students’ subjective mental health (γ100 = 0.20, SE = 0.05, p < .01),
thus supporting H4a. Students’ physical health was also positively associated with
PTS across the semester (γ100 = 0.13, SE = 0.04, p < .001), in support of H4b.

4.3 Relationships between teachers’ SWB and PTS

Finally, the results presented in Table 6 indicated that students’ perceptions of teacher
support were predicted only by educational level at L3 (γ003 = 0.34, SE = 0.09, p < .01).
Despite the significant and positive zero-order associations found in the initial analy-
sis, both TSE (γ002 = 0.30, SE = 0.15, p = .14) and teachers’ life satisfaction (γ001 = 0.29,
SE = 0.18, p = .07) yielded non-significant estimates, rejecting H3a and H3b in the
main analysis. Finally, our analyses also indicated that students’ perception of teacher
support significantly decreased throughout the semester (γ100 = − 0.17, SE = 0.04,
p < .01), and this decrease had significant variation across students (r1 = 0.05, p < .001).
Given the significant variation in this slope, we further tested whether teacher-level
predictors can predict it. This analysis has yielded a significant cross-level interac-
tion between educational level and the effect of time on PTS (γ102 = 0.16, SE = 0.05,
p = .005), meaning that the decline is observable among high school students, and it
has close-to-zero values in the case of university students.

5 Discussion

The present study investigated the relationships between teachers’ SWB and stu-
dents’ subjective mental and physical health. We assessed teachers’ SWB (i.e., life
satisfaction and TSE) at the beginning of the second semester and we linked these
measures to students’ subjective health reports and PTS at three moments in time
across the semester.

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Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 823

Table 5 Results of main analyses testing predictors of students’ subjective physical and mental health at
multiple levels
Level and variable Random L1 L3 Random L1 Teacher ef-
intercepts predictors predictors intercepts predictors fects (L3)
Physical health Mental health
Level 1
Intercept 3.65*** 3.67*** 3.58*** 3.81*** 3.72*** 3.72***
(0.05) (0.05) (0.03) (0.07) (0.05) (0.06)
PTS 0.15*** 0.13** 0.21*** 0.20***
(0.04) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04)
Measurement 0.10(0.06) 0.10(0.06)
moment
Level 3
Teacher life 0.02(0.14) -
satisfaction
Teaching - 0.48*(0.17)
self-efficacy
Educational level 0.21(0.09)* -
Variance
components
Within-student 0.33 0.32 0.32 0.51 0.5 0.5
(L1)
Between-student 0.34*** 0.31*** 0.31*** 0.30*** 0.28*** 0.28***
(L2)
Between-cluster 0.02*** 0.01* 0.003 0.04*** 0.03*** 0.01**
(L3)
Model fit
-2LL (df) 53.4(1)*** 13.7(2)*** 93.9(2)*** 10.2(1)***
Number of free 4 5 7 4 6 7
parameters
Pseudo R2 0.07(7.3%) 0.01(1.4%) 0.05(4.7%) 0.02(2.4%)
Note. Robust standard errors of estimates are in parentheses; PTS = perceived teacher support;
***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05

5.1 Teachers’ SWB and students subjective health outcomes

The results of this study highlighted TSE as an important teacher-level antecedent

of students’ subjective mental health. Students reported higher mental health across
the semester, when they were taught by teachers who felt efficacious in teaching.
This finding can theoretically be explained by the Prosocial Classroom model (Jen-
nings & Greenberg, 2009), which postulated that teachers with higher well-being
and social-emotional competence can influence student outcomes through the use of
more effective teaching strategies. This aligns with previous empirical evidence that
highlighted how teachers with higher TSE demonstrated better instructional quality
and more efficient teaching at high standards, fostering engagement and achievement
(Künsting et al., 2016; Zee & Koomen, 2016). Overall, the literature suggests that
highly efficacious teachers create a learning environment in which students feel safe
to explore, perceiving a better connection to the teacher and the overall school envi-
ronment (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). In this kind of learning environment, stu-
dents have the space for a positive learning experience and are stimulated to achieve

13
824 Z. Pap et al.

Table 6 Results of main analy- Level and variable Random L1 predictors L3 predictors
ses testing predictors of PTS at intercepts
multiple levels
Level 1
Intercept 3.65*** 3.41*** 3.30***
(0.05) (0.09) (0.07)
Time − 0.10**(0.03) − 0.18**(0.04)
Level 3
Teacher life 0.29(0.18)
satisfaction
Teaching 0.3(0.15)
self-efficacy
Educational level 0.34(0.09)**
Cross-level
interactions
Time*Educational 0.16**(0.05)
level
Variance components
Within-student 0.29 0.28 0.22
(L1)
Between-student 0.32*** 0.32*** 0.34***
(L2)
Between-cluster 0.15*** 0.15*** 0.0005
(L3)
Model fit
-2LL (df) 52.9(1)*** 142.5(9)***
Note. Robust standard errors of Number of free 4 5 14
estimates are in parentheses; parameters
***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05 Pseudo R2 0.01(1.3%) 0.25(25.2%)

better, which helps them remain more emotionally healthy (Tilga et al., 2020; Ong et
al., 2021). Previous studies have reported associations to healthier emotional experi-
ences and less negative affectivity among teachers with higher TSE (Koenen et al.,
2017; Prewett & Whitney, 2021). These findings suggested that there are multiple
potential mediating mechanisms to explore in understanding the effects on student
health measures, and looking into emotions that highly efficacious teachers experi-
ence and express, could shed some light into the relationship to students’ subjective
health.
Teacher life satisfaction showed a zero-order positive association to students’
physical health but this relationship did not remain significant in the model where
the effects of educational level and PTS were also present. Jennings and Greenberg
(2009) argued that teachers play an important role model of social-emotional behav-
iour for students. This implies that, through the model of highly satisfied teachers,
students could learn to be more satisfied with life themselves, which in turn has been
found to associate with improved self-rated physical health among students (Zullig et
al., 2005). Despite such arguments, our results replicated the non-significant link to
student well-being discussed by Braun and colleagues (2020) in elementary schools.
It seems that teachers’ life satisfaction can be relevant in predicting prosocial behav-
iors in the classroom (Braun et al., 2020), and students’ achievement (Duckworth et
al., 2009), but was not directly connected to students’ health, beyond the variability

13
Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 825

that could be explained by the differences in educational levels. Nonetheless, this

aspect of teacher SWB has received the least attention and empirical work so far
and given the extensive evidence for the positive influence of life satisfaction and
happiness in the occupational health literature (Erdogan et al., 2012; Lyubomirsky et
al., 2005), we believe that further investigations with larger teacher samples might
provide important findings related to this aspect.

5.2 Teachers SWB as predictor of PTS

In the framework of the Prosocial Classroom Model (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009)
teachers’ SWB in general is viewed as an important antecedent of PTS. However, our
findings are inconclusive regarding this assertion. The initial correlations have sug-
gested that teachers’ life satisfaction and TSE are indeed associated with higher PTS,
but these associations were not significant when educational level was also included
as predictor alongside teacher SWB. This suggests that even if there is some degree
of connection between teacher SWB and PTS, as suggested by previous research
(Zee & Koomen, 2016), in our sample the difference in educational stages was a
stronger predictor than teachers’ life satisfaction or TSE.
Our results also indicated that university students rated significantly higher levels
of PTS across the semester, as compared with high school students. A meta-analysis
conducted by Lei et al., (2018) has compared the strength of the relationship between
PTS and positive academic emotions across all stages from elementary school to uni-
versity. Their results suggested that the strongest relationship across all stages can be
found among university students, suggesting that they experience more positive emo-
tional responses when their teachers are supportive, as compared to younger students.
Hence, it is possible that university students appreciate more the time their professors
allocate for supportive interactions. Hagenauer and Volet (2014), highlighted in their
review that supportive interactions can be less frequent in higher education due to
large numbers of students and heavy workloads that faculty members handle, but
students often appreciate the quality of interactions over their frequency.

5.3 PTS as predictor of student subjective health outcomes

Our findings revealed PTS as an important predictor of physical and mental health
across the semester. These results are in line with previous findings and highlight the
value of PTS in fostering students’ physical health not only in high school, as sug-
gested by previous research (Dudovitz et al., 2016; Laftman et al., 2021), but also
among older students in higher education settings. Moreover, our results are aligned
with previous findings that linked PTS to lower internalizing problems (Conner et
al., 2014), fewer depressive symptoms (Mizuta et al., 2016), and less anxiety and
self-esteem issues (Wit et al., 2011). Theoretical explanations for these results can be
found within Self-Determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2001), which asserts that PTS
can foster students’ well-being through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs
of relatedness and competence. From this perspective, when students feel that their
teachers are considerate and supportive, they also feel more related and connected to
their learning experience. Furthermore, when they perceive that they receive mean-

13
826 Z. Pap et al.

ingful instructional support, they can strengthen their sense of competence. Satisfy-
ing these psychological needs in turn, is a key determinant of students’ adjustment
and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001).

5.4 Implications for theory and practice

Our study has implications for our theoretical understanding of the well-being rela-
tionships between students and teachers in high-school and college settings. Because
our participants were involved in secondary and tertiary education, our results extend
the Prosocial Classroom model (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009), which were mostly
supported by research conducted in primary education. Our findings bring support
for the model to a degree but suggest that not all relationships function the same way
when we consider the dynamics with older students. First, our results fully supported
the models’ assertion that PTS would be a key element in predicting student health
and well-being. Supportive relationships with students seem to be highly beneficial,
regardless the educational level students are currently pursuing. Second, while TSE
(eudaimonia) had predicted better mental health among students, which aligned with
the assertions of the Prosocial Classroom Model, teachers’ life satisfaction did not
predict any of students’ health outcomes. This highlights that not all aspects of teach-
ers’ SWB have the same effects, and aspects of hedonic well-being and eudaimonia
could have differential relationships to student outcomes. Third, while the model
draws a direct relationship between teachers’ SWB and PTS, our results were incon-
clusive in regards of this assertion. Both teacher SWB components have related to
PTS in simple associations, but these became non-significant when the difference
in educational level was accounted for. Consequently, we need much more future
research in secondary and tertiary education settings, that would further probe the
associations described in the Prosocial Classroom model and verify which of its
assumptions, and to what degree are also valid outside primary education settings.
Our results also have practical implications for schools and teachers alike. First,
teachers and professors need to be aware of the ways their self-efficacy in their teach-
ing and quality of relationships with their students can influence students’ subjective
physical and mental health evaluations. The role model of teachers’ socio-emotional
behaviour and the supportiveness and caring they manifest in their interactions with
students can have an impact on the development of their students’ health (Suldo et al.,
2009; Zee & Koomen, 2016), not only on their academic achievement.

5.5 Limitations and future research

One important limitation to have in mind while interpreting our results is the small
sample size at the classroom level (N = 14). While multilevel analysis can yield robust
and reliable estimates with as few as 10 cluster (Snijders & Bosker 2012) the number
of clusters available for us in this study did not provide sufficient power to estimate
highly parametrized models. Thus, while results from earlier educational stages point
towards a possible mediating mechanism between teachers’ SWB and student out-
comes through PTS (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009), our data only allowed us to con-
struct separate models, investigating PTS as outcome of teachers’ SWB in one model,

13
Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 827

while testing it as predictor in others. Future research could advance our knowledge
by focusing more on the role of PTS as mediator (Harding et al., 2019) between
teachers’ hedonic SWB and students’ physical health, while at the same time testing
better instructional quality (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Zee & Koomen, 2016),
satisfaction of basic psychological needs (Ryan & Deci, 2001), and possibly self-
regulations strategies (Braun et al., 2020) as mediators between teachers’ eudaimonia
and students’ mental health. The reduced sample size at the teacher level might have
also accounted for the non-significant results in the multi-level models, compared
to the associations found in the correlations. Therefore, we advise to view the non-
significant findings regarding the relations between teacher SWB and student health
with caution, and to further explore these with a larger sample of classes.
Another limitation of this study concerns the directionality of the well-being
dynamics in the classroom. As most of the research before, we focused on the effects
of teachers’ SWB on student outcomes. This preoccupation is understandable, given
that students are the primary and most important beneficiaries of the educational
activity at any grade level. However, it is most likely that the dynamic between stu-
dents’ health and teachers’ SWB is bidirectional. Jennings and Greenberg (2009)
emphasized this in the Prosocial Classroom Model, proposing so-called burnout cas-
cades, whereby teachers struggling with low well-being have difficulties in establish-
ing relationships with students and implementing efficient instructional strategies,
leading to poor outcomes for students, which feed back into teachers’ exhaustion
and well-being issues. Furthermore, PTS also seems to work both ways, as teach-
ers are experiencing lower TSE and less enjoyment in their profession when they
struggle with conflictual and unsupportive relationships with students (Spilt et al.,
2011). However, most of these associations are derived from correlational research
predominantly conducted with young children (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Spilt
et al., 2011; Zee & Koomen 2016). At this moment we need more evidence from
intensive longitudinal studies (e.g., experience sampling studies) focusing on both
parties’ SWB and daily emotions (Spilt et al., 2011) to better understand and explain
the relationships that we observe at all educational levels.
Finally, our sample was predominantly composed of female students, especially
at the university level, which somewhat limits our generalizability to study-domains
predominantly chosen by girls (e.g., educational sciences, social work, psychology).
Future studies that account for gender differences in student health or perceived
teacher support could uncover potential gender-specific effects and phenomena.

5.6 Conclusion

This study has highlighted the complex and multi-layered nature of the relationships
between teachers’ SWB and students’ health. How confident the teacher is, and how
s/he relates to life and its’ challenges remain factors that could be relevant in further
investigations aiming to uncover the inter-relations between teacher SWB and stu-
dent health and well-being. Our study also points towards the importance of PTS in
improving students’ health. While previous research has established the importance
of student-teacher relations for younger childrens’ well-being, our research clearly
showed that this remains true across higher educational stages, and high-school and

13
828 Z. Pap et al.

university students also feel healthier when their teachers make efforts to offer them
support.

Funding This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS
- UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-1760, within PNCDI III”.

Declarations

Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval This study was conducted following the American Psychological Association’s ethical
guidelines and the ethical review board of the West University of Timișoara. Based on these guidelines,
studies using standardized self-report surveys in which participants are neither deceived nor involved in an
intervention are formally exempted from an institutional ethics committee’s approval.

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cable law.

Zselyke Pap is a Research Assistant after ending her doctoral studies in Psychology at the West Univer-
sity of Timișoara. Her research activity focuses mainly on occupational health, organizational climate,
proactive behaviors, and self-undermining organizational strain processes, but also the interdependence
between teachers’ and students’ well-being in the educational domain.

Dr. Laurentiu Maricuțoiu is Professor in the Department of Psychology of the West University of
Timișoara, specialized in Work and Organizational Psychology, research methodology and advanced
statistical methods. In his research activity, Laurențiu Maricuțoiu analyzes the conditions of installing
the state of exhaustion at work, the methods of prevention of this state, or the intervention methods for
improving the employee quality of life.

Dr. Delia Vîrgă is currently Professor in the Department of Psychology of the West University of Timișoara.
Her research in the field of organizational and occupational psychology focuses on the personal resources
and their relationship with performance and well-being, in different professional categories, as well as the
design and implementation of organizational interventions to improve employee’s well-being.

Dr. Marian Ilie is Associate Professor in the Teacher Training Department at the West University of
Timişoara, Romania. He is also director of Teacher Training Department and Research coordinator of
the Center of Academic Development at the same university. His research has focused on how instruc-
tional design and curriculum development models, methods and tools can be used to improve the teachers’
instructional approach.

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Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to… 831

Velibor Mladenovici is a Ph.D. student in Educational Sciences at the West University of Timisoara. His
Ph.D. research is linked to the instructional development for higher education teachers area, including
academics’ conceptions about learning and teaching as well as their teaching approaches to uncover their
impact on students learning outcomes.

Bianca Popescu is a clinical psychologist and a Ph.D. student in Psychology interested in mental health,
self-regulation, and stress diagnosis and management through psychotherapeutic processes. Her research
interests focus on the stress-appraisal-coping perspective: how stress is perceived and managed by stu-
dents and how students appraise and cope with academic stress.

Daniela Valache is a Ph.D. student in Education Sciences at the West University of Timisoara. Her Ph.D.
research aims to discover methods for teaching music whose effectiveness has been proven and train teach-
ers towards evidence-based practice in the classroom.

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