Work-life balance and wellbeing among teachers in Bangladesh: a reflexive thematic analysis of stress, coping, and institutional support

Teacher wellbeing and work-life balance (WLB) are increasingly recognised as institutional rather than solely individual concerns, yet qualitative evidence from Bangladesh remains limited. This study explored how Bangladeshi teachers experience WLB, the institutional support they consider necessary, and how they envision context-appropriate wellbeing programs. Using a qualitative design grounded in constructivist-contextualist epistemology, reflexive thematic analysis was applied to semi-structured interviews with 23 teachers from urban, regional, and remote-Upazila school contexts, interpreted through a social-ecological lens. Three themes were developed: structural and personal barriers, including workload intensification, gendered caregiving burdens, context-specific constraints in remote settings, and unsupportive institutional cultures; a need for proactive, leadership-supported and system-level support; and principles of holism, flexibility, and genuine teacher involvement for future wellbeing programs. The results show that participants understood WLB as shaped primarily by workload, caregiving demands, leadership practices, and institutional conditions rather than by individual resilience alone. Accounts from two remote-Upazila participants also illustrated context-specific infrastructural constraints, but the study does not claim geographical representativeness or systematic location effects. The study contributes context-specific qualitative evidence and practical implications for school leadership and wellbeing program design, with analytic rather than statistical transferability to comparable settings.