Sustaining teacher wellbeing through relationality: a case study of two Australian primary teachers

Teacher wellbeing is frequently framed as an individual psychological state, addressed through interventions targeting resilience or stress reduction. Such approaches risk overlooking the relational and systemic conditions through which wellbeing is lived and sustained in everyday school life. This study explores primary teacher wellbeing through a descriptive and hermeneutical phenomenological lens, drawing on Alfred Schutz’s concept of the lifeworld to examine how meaning is constituted within shared professional experience. Focusing on two Australian primary teachers working collaboratively in a demanding school context, data from reflective journals and in-depth interviews illuminate how identity, emotional labour, boundary collapse, and institutional pressures shape wellbeing over time. The findings reveal that consociate relationships, face-to-face collegial partnerships grounded in reciprocity and shared understanding, function as critical sustaining structures within destabilised professional lifeworlds. Teacher wellbeing emerges not as a stable individual attribute, but as a relational and intersubjective accomplishment. The study contributes to wellbeing scholarship by challenging individualised framings and highlighting the structural importance of collegial support in sustaining teachers through conditions of intensifying strain.