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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1506161
Healthy school, Healthy teachers: Mediating effect of optimism
Provisionally accepted
LIBERATA DE JESUS FERRÃO BORRALHO 1,2,3,4*
Adelinda Araujo Candeias 1,2
Saul Neves Jesus 4,5
João Viseu 1,3- 1 University of Evora, Évora, Portugal
- 2 Comprehensive Health Research Centre, University of Evora, Évora, Portugal
- 3 Research Center in Education and Psychology, University of Évora, Évora, Portugal
- 4 CinTurs - Research Center for Tourism Sustainability and Well-being, Faro, Portugal
- 5 University of Algarve, Faro, Faro, Portugal
Purpose: Teachers' health and well-being have been deteriorating, impacting both the teaching process and school organization. Ensuring student success requires teachers to feel healthy, satisfied, competent, and engaged. However, research on the role of organizational and personal variables, particularly from a positive psychology perspective, remains scarce in the educational context.Methodology: This study examined: (a) the direct relationships between organizational health and various dimensions of teachers' health (professional well-being, exhaustion, cognitive, musculoskeletal, and voice disorders); (b) the direct relationship between organizational health and optimism; and (c) the mediating role of optimism in these relationships. A research protocol was applied online to 12,104 Portuguese teachers from basic and secondary education. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the mediation effect of optimism.Findings: The results confirmed all hypotheses. Organizational health was positively associated with optimism and professional well-being and negatively linked to exhaustion, cognitive disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, and voice changes. Similarly, optimism showed a positive relationship with professional well-being and a negative association with the adverse health conditions. Furthermore, optimism mediated the relationship between organizational health and teachers' health.Conclusion: The study underscores the crucial role of organizational health in teachers’ well-being and highlights optimism as a key mediator in mitigating the negative impacts of school organization on teachers’ health.
Keywords: Occupational Health, optimism, Organizational health, Teacher's health, Teacher's work risks, Professional well-being
Received: 04 Oct 2024; Accepted: 14 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 BORRALHO, Candeias, Jesus and Viseu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
LIBERATA DE JESUS FERRÃO BORRALHO, University of Evora, Évora, Portugal
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