Conceptualizing teachers’ occupational health and personal well-being for research on adult SEL: The Domain-Specific Valence model

The study of “teacher well-being” is plagued by the jingle-jangle fallacy, where the term “teacher well-being” has been used to describe a variety of different psychological constructs. In this paper, we synthesize existing models across disciplines to provide a unifying conceptual framework – the Domain-Specific Valence (DSV) model of teachers’ occupational health and personal well-being – to provide common terminology to be used in future work related to adult social and emotional learning (SEL). This model addresses the need for greater clarity in domain-specificity (occupational health vs. personal well-being), and a wider assessment of both unpleasant and pleasant emotional states (i.e., valence ) in the study of “teacher well-being.” We also review research demonstrating the correlates and consequences of teachers’ occupational health and personal well-being for teacher, classroom, and student outcomes to emphasize the importance of this topic of study. We then situate this conceptual model within the Contemplative Social and Emotional Learning (CSEL) model of teacher professional development, in which occupational health and personal well-being are theorized as proximal outcomes of intervention programs targeting adult SEL. Finally, we offer a list of provisional measures that can be employed to assess teachers’ occupational health and personal well-being, and suggest avenues for measurement work to optimize our assessment of these constructs in the educational context.