Conference Agenda

Schools across Europe are undergoing substantial organizational and pedagogical transformations due to organisational, educational and societal changes. These developments reshape and expand professional roles (Squillaci & Hofmann, 2021) which may heighten concerns about teacher health and well-being.

The well-being of professionals in schools is associated to illness-related outcomes (Crain et al., 2017), affective organizational commitment (Sandmeier & Mandel, 2020) professional retention and turnover intentions (Wang & Hall, 2021). Staff well-being also affects the quality of educational practice and is linked to student performance (Madigan & Kim, 2021), as well as student well-being (Salmela-Aro et al., 2019). Well-being of professionals can therefore be understood as a critical resource for both individual health and the sustainable functioning of schools as organizations.

In line with the ECER 2026 theme, this symposium brings together conceptual, methodological and empirical perspectives to advance the understanding of how working conditions, collaboration, support structures and personal resources influence staff well-being. It aims to enhance our understanding of occupational well-being among the diverse professionals working in school settings, including teachers, special education teachers, and school leaders by combining individual perspectives with relational processes and school-level approaches. In line with job demands-resources theory (Bakker et al., 2023), we explore how school environments can foster healthy and sustainable working conditions. Contributions from multiple country contexts will help highlight both shared challenges and promising approaches across different educational systems in Europe.

Adopting a whole-school perspective, the first contribution analyses levels, trends and determinants of teachers’ occupational well-being using data from the HBSC Teachers Survey in Italy, examining organizational, interpersonal, personal and professional factors in relation to multiple well-being outcomes such as burnout and engagement. Drawing on cross-sectional data from 2026 and trend comparisons with the 2022 survey, preliminary results highlight organizational support, particularly principal support, as a key protective factor and provides evidence to inform systemic school health promotion efforts.

The second presentation presents longitudinal findings on job demands, job resources, work engagement and burnout among novice special education teachers in Switzerland, drawing on the job demands-resources theory and self-determination theory. Focusing on the early career phase, it examines how changing role expectations, workload, and role clarity shape engagement and emotional exhaustion among novice special education teachers.

The third contribution examines the role of interprofessional collaboration for teacher well-being in Finnish comprehensive schools within an inclusive education context. It identifies three distinct work engagement and burnout profiles (engaged, engaged-exhausted, burned-out) and shows that engaged teachers had the most positive experiences of interprofessional collaboration while burned-out teachers reported the most negative experiences. Furthermore, preliminary results from a second study involving 218 student welfare professionals show that teaching professionals report more positive perceptions of interprofessional collaboration, including higher motivation, more favourable leadership experiences, and stronger prerequisites for collaboration.

The fourth contribution examines which research designs are suitable for analysing change processes in schools, particularly in the context of occupational well-being and school-based health interventions and discusses the potential of a realist evaluation approach for understanding how, why, and under which conditions interventions contribute to change. It presents an integrated, theory-driven and context-sensitive design combining school improvement and organizational intervention frameworks, illustrated through a multiple-case study of four schools implementing a participatory organisational health promotion intervention.

Together, the contributions demonstrate how education research can generate actionable knowledge to support teacher well-being in increasingly complex school environments.

Schools are increasingly recognised as key settings for health promotion, as they are complex system continuously shaped by organisational, educational and societal changes (World Health Organization, 2021). From this perspective, the health and well-being of all members of the school community are central components of school health promotion (Langford et al., 2015). Teachers occupy a pivotal role: their work is marked by ongoing change and high emotional, relational and organisational demands, which may increase the risk of stress, burnout and disengagement over time (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Maslach et al., 2001). Despite growing evidence on the importance of school climate, working and organisational conditions (e.g. Collie et al., 2012), much of the literature still approaches teachers’ well-being primarily as an individual matter, with limited attention to school-level and contextual determinants. Adopting a whole-school approach, the present study investigates levels, trends and determinants of teachers’ occupational well-being using data from the HBSC Teachers Survey in Italy. Data come from the 2026 edition of the HBSC Teachers Survey and focus on teachers’ health and well-being. The survey is administered to teachers working in the same classes participating in the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study in Lombardy (Italy). The analyses will examine organisational factors (e.g., workload and working conditions), interpersonal factors (e.g., perceived support from school principals and relationships with colleagues and families), and personal and professional factors (e.g., teachers’ role identities) in relation to multiple well-being outcomes. Although the study design is cross-sectional, the availability of comparable data from the 2022 edition (approximately 6,000 teachers) allows us to describe trends in teachers’ well-being over the past four years. The study applies descriptive, trend, and multivariate analyses. Differences in burnout and engagement are further explored by schools’ participation in the Health Promoting Schools network. Preliminary results highlight the role of organizational support, such as principal’s support, as protective factors of teachers’ well-being. The study is expected to identify risk and protective patterns in teachers’ occupational well-being and to provide evidence to guide the development of systemic, whole-school health promotion policies and interventions.

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands–Resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115 Collie, R. J., Shapka, J. D., & Perry, N. E. (2012). School climate and social–emotional learning: Predicting teacher stress, job satisfaction, and teaching efficacy. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 1189–1204. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029356 World Health Organization. (2021). Making every school a health-promoting school: Global standards and indicators. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe. Langford, R., Bonell, C., Jones, H., et al. (2015). The World Health Organization’s Health Promoting Schools framework: A Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health, 15, 130. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1360-y Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.397

Special education teachers play a central role in implementing inclusive education, yet research on how they experience their work, particularly during the transition into the profession, remains scarce (Squillaci, 2020). As education systems expand inclusive practices, schools undergo structural and pedagogical changes that reshape collaboration, role expectations and responsibilities, increasing work complexity and potentially heightening job demands with consequences for special education teacher’s health (Bettini et al., 2017; Gilmour et al., 2023). Cross-sectional studies, primarily conducted in the U.S., indicate that role ambiguity, role conflicts and workload are associated with well-being (Park & Shin, 2020). These demands are especially relevant for novice teachers (Bettini et al., 2017), who are most vulnerable to emotional exhaustion and early career attrition (Burger et al., 2021), a critical concern amid the ongoing shortage of qualified personnel in the education sector (Sandmeier & Herzog, 2024). Despite the relevance of these processes, longitudinal evidence regarding special education teachers, especially in Europe, remains limited. Drawing on the job demands-resources theory (Bakker et al., 2023), this study examines the longitudinal associations between job demands, job resources and well-being among novice special education teachers in Switzerland, analysing whether workplace factors (role conflicts, role clarity and workload) prospectively predict work engagement and emotional exhaustion, and whether interaction effects emerge. The study applies autoregressive models to capture how earlier levels of demands, resources and well-being predict later levels. The contribution will be presenting early results, aiming to discuss further data analysis and compare the results in the context of international research with a European focus. We expect that demands will increase exhaustion and decrease work engagement, whereas resources will show the opposite pattern and interaction effects will reveal booster and buffer mechanisms.

Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Sanz-Vergel, A. (2023). Job Demands–Resources theory: Ten years later. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10(1), 25–53. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-053933 Bettini, E., Jones, N., Brownell, M., Conroy, M., Park, Y., Leite, W., Crockett, J., & Benedict, A. (2017). Workload manageability among novice special and general educators: Relationships with emotional exhaustion and career intentions. Remedial and Special Education, 38(4), 246–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741932517708327 Burger, J., Bellhäuser, H., & Imhof, M. (2021). Mentoring styles and novice teachers’ well-being: The role of basic need satisfaction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 103, 103345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103345 Gilmour, A. F., Nguyen, T. D., Redding, C., & Bettini, E. (2023). The shifting context of special education teachers’ work. Remedial and Special Education, 44(3), 171–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/07419325221113016 Park, E.-Y., & Shin, M. (2020). A meta-analysis of special education teachers’ burnout. SAGE Open, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020918297 Sandmeier, A., & Herzog, S. (2024). Maßnahmen gegen den Lehrkräftemangel in der Schweiz. Eine empirische Perspektive. Journal für LehrerInnenbildung, 24(01), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.35468/jlb-01-2024-02 Squillaci, M. (2020). Analysis of the burnout levels of special education teachers in Switzerland in link with a reform implementation. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 36(5), 844–853. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2020.1809802

Interprofessional collaboration has become an integral part of the operating culture and effective support practices of Finnish comprehensive schools, following the development towards an inclusive education system (see Ainscow, 2020; Honkasilta et al., 2024). In Finland, both the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education and the Pupil and Student Welfare Act presume school professionals to engage in interprofessional collaboration in matters related to students’ learning and well-being. However, there is limited knowledge about how interprofessional collaboration works in schools (see e.g., Timperi et al., 2024; Vainikainen et al., 2015) and how it is connected to professionals’ well-being. At the same time, there is ongoing concern about the increased teacher burnout (Pyhältö et al., 2021; Salmela-Aro et al., 2019). Our research aims to investigate whether interprofessional collaboration could enhance teachers' well-being and prevent burnout. Our study (Holmström et al., 2023), which surveyed 355 comprehensive school teachers (grades 1–9), showed that Finnish teachers have positive experiences of interprofessional collaboration in their work. The aim was to investigate teachers’ work engagement and burnout profiles and their associations with interprofessional collaboration. Three distinct profiles were identified: engaged (54 %), engaged-exhausted (33 %), and burned-out (13 %). Even though all profiles scored relatively high in all dimensions of interprofessional collaboration (i.e., student support, amount of collaboration, and operating culture), the results showed significant differences between profiles. Taken together, engaged teachers had the most positive experiences of interprofessional collaboration, while burned-out teachers had the most negative experiences. In our recent study, preliminary results from 218 student welfare professionals show that teachers and other teaching professionals have rather positive perceptions of interprofessional collaboration within student welfare teams. Teaching professionals demonstrated a strong motivation to collaborate, and they had favorable experiences of the leadership in welfare teams as well as the use of professional power in collaborative practices. Finally, they scored significantly higher in prerequisites for collaboration than other student welfare professionals. In light of the results presented, interprofessional collaboration might be an important factor in promoting teacher well-being, especially in an inclusive education system. While most teachers have positive experiences of interprofessional collaboration, there are also teachers who do not share this view and therefore are possibly predisposed to burnout. In order to keep teachers engaged with their jobs, we need successful interprofessional collaboration that meets the needs of both students and professionals.

Ainscow, M. (2020). Promoting inclusion and equity in education: Lessons from international experiences. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1), 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2020.1729587 Holmström, A., Tuominen, H., Laasanen, M., & Veermans, M. (2023). Teachers’ work engagement burnout profiles: Associations with sense of efficacy and interprofessional collaboration in school. Teaching and Teacher Education, 132, 104251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104251 Honkasilta, J., Pihlaja, P., & Pesonen, H. (2024). The state of inclusion in the state of inclusion?: Inclusion as principled practice in Finnish basic education. In H. Katsui & M. T. Laitinen (Eds.), Disability, Happiness and the Welfare State (pp. 83–110). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032685519-6

Organisational health interventions aim to improve psychosocial work environments by changing how work is organised, designed, and managed, with the long-term goal of enhancing occupational well-being, health, and staff retention (von Thiele Schwarz et al., 2020). Similar to broader school improvement initiatives, such interventions require flexible, context-sensitive implementation that reflects the complex and adaptive nature of schools as organisations (Koh & Askell-Williams, 2021). However, many evaluation approaches remain focused on linear cause–effect relationships and struggle to capture the dynamic, non-linear, and context-dependent processes through which change unfolds in real-world school settings (Ryan et al., 2024). Against this background, this methodological contribution addresses the question of which research designs are suitable for analysing change processes in schools, particularly in the field of occupational well-being and school-based health interventions. Building on the limitations of classical randomized controlled trial designs, the paper discusses the potential of a realist evaluation approach (Pawson et al., 2005) for understanding how, why, and under which conditions interventions contribute to change. The paper presents an integrated research design that combines the Comprehensive Framework for Effective School Improvement (Reezigt & Creemers, 2005) with the Framework for Evaluating Organizational-Level Interventions (Nielsen & Randall, 2013). This combined analytical perspective enables theory-driven yet context-sensitive observation of the interplay between contextual conditions, implementation processes, and stakeholders’ mental models and sensemaking processes, and relates these dynamics to observed change processes in schools. The strengths and limitations of this design are examined through its application in a multiple-case study of four schools implementing a participatory organisational health promotion intervention aimed at improving teachers’ working conditions. By systematically linking context, process quality, and stakeholder perspectives, the approach allows for a nuanced understanding of how occupational well-being initiatives are enacted and shaped within schools. Within the symposium, the paper provides a conceptual and methodological framework that complements the empirical studies by offering tools to interpret heterogeneous outcomes and implementation trajectories. It contributes to ongoing discussions on how educational research can more adequately evaluate complex interventions targeting the occupational well-being of professionals in schools.

Koh, G. A., & Askell-Williams, H. (2021). Sustainable school-improvement in complex adaptive systems: A scoping review. Review of Education, 9(1), 281–314. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3246 Nielsen, K., & Randall, R. (2013). Opening the black box: Presenting a model for evaluating organizational-level interventions. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 22(5), 601–617. Pawson, R., Greenhalgh, T., Harvey, G., & Walshe, K. (2005). Realist review-a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions. Journal of health services research & policy, 10(1_suppl), 21–34. Reezigt, G. J., & Creemers, B. P. (2005). A comprehensive framework for effective school improvement. School effectiveness and school improvement, 16(4), 407–424. Ryan, A., Prieto-Rodriguez, E., Miller, A., & Gore, J. (2024). What can Implementation Science tell us about scaling interventions in school settings? A scoping review. Educational Research Review, 44, 100620. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2024.100620 von Thiele Schwarz, U., Nielsen, K., Edwards, K., Hasson, H., Ipsen, C., Savage, C., Simonsen Abildgaard, J., Richter, A., Lornudd, C., & Mazzocato, P. (2020). How to design, implement and evaluate organizational interventions for maximum impact: The Sigtuna Principles. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 1–13.