Introduction

Teaching is generally considered to be a high-risk profession due to professional complexities and challenges, including collegial competition, standardized performativity, increasing accountability, and instant appraisal (Acton & Glasgow, 2015; Capone & Petrillo, 2020). It has long been taken for granted that teachers, as professionals, should be able to look after their own well-being, hence, largely leaving teacher well-being (TWB) neglected both in research and in practice (Tarrasch et al., 2020; Viac & Fraser, 2020). With the increase in requirements for accountability and the academic emphasis in academia, researchers and associated parties have been more inclined to delve into what teachers need to prioritize in their work, for example, improving the quality of their teaching and student results that underestimates the criticality of TWB (Dreer & Gouasé, 2021; Hascher & Waber, 2021). Only recently has it been realized that TWB should not be sacrificed for the sake of academic accountability and quality education (McCallum, 2021). As a result, the literature on TWB has blossomed recently. Echoing this observation, recent evidence from Finland (Taajamo & Puhakka, 2020), the UK (Education Support, 2021), and the USA (Herman et al., 2020) revealed that teachers’ work-related stress is high. The promotion of TWB, therefore, has turned out to be one major addition to the preservation of quality education and to sustainably developing schools, students, teachers, and even society through robust means (OECD, 2019; Viac & Fraser, 2020). The promotion of TWB, therefore, has become one key solution to the retention of quality education, as well as to the sustainable development of teachers, students, schools, and even society through robust means (OECD, 2019).

It is reassuring to witness that research into TWB has steadily been gaining increased acknowledgment. The growing set of research studies conducted on TWB has finally gained a ‘critical mass,’ enough, therefore, to be adequate for a quantitative systematic review to be performed (Chen et al., 2020, 2021a). Researchers (e.g., Hascher & Waber, 2021) have claimed that research reviews can perform a crucial function in a field’s knowledge development. Such a knowledge base would not only provide signposts on the path of intellectual accumulation of TWB research but also offer a more fine-grained understanding of the state of individual teachers’ well-being, essentials, influential drivers, and consequences. However, to date, scholars have only conducted narrative reviews (Hascher & Waber, 2021; McCallum et al., 2017) and meta-analysis reviews (Oliveira et al., 2021; Zarate et al., 2019). It would appear that no quantitative reviews have focused on the developmental trends of studies conducted on TWB. There is always a need for a new review to take onboard a different perspective in order to have a nuanced understanding of a particular field. A descriptive quantitative review is claimed to be a broader-based effort that portrays the developmental trajectory of the ‘global knowledge base’ of a research field, when the research literature on a field has reached a sufficient ‘critical mass’ (Hallinger, 2021).

Suggested by past reviews conducted on TWB research, the current review sought to comprehend the developmental trajectory of knowledge production existing in TWB, in particular, the foci, the research type, as well as the methodological trend, during the 54 years between 1968 and 2021. This work offers a higher-level position regarding the changes that have so far happened within the field. It also provides a basis for making comparisons and bringing varied perspectives in order to interpret the unfolding of TWB studies by utilizing a more recent and larger corpus of published studies than those included in previously undertaken reviews. It needs to be taken into consideration that the current review did not concentrate on the narratives of the articles that were reviewed but has restricted its focus to developmental trends instead and, particularly, to the methodological trend that has been used within the field of TWB research.

Previous Teacher Well-being Reviews

As there has been growing interest in TWB, some scholars have conducted systematic reviews of it. However, only a few of these have been systematic literature reviews that have either focused on teachers in general or teachers at a particular level (e.g., ECE, literature review for interventions, or meta-analysis). The first systematic literature review was produced in 2009 (Bricheno et al., 2009) and its purpose was to evaluate the evidence available about TWB. It used documentary analysis of the relevant literature and interviews with 31 stakeholders or experts in order to explore concepts and arguments about TWB, the conditions under which it is promoted or undermined, the effectiveness of different kinds of support, and the influence of TWB on student achievement. It also examined the ways in which the work-related well-being of teachers has been construed. That review has acted as a milestone study to encourage investigations on TWB, particularly the consequences of TWB and to stimulate more literature reviews to systematically understand the construct of TWB. However, the authors of that review did not state the number of publications included in it, although the results of the first systematic review are comprehensive and indicate the criteria of the selection.

Other reviews have concentrated on a specific group of teachers in order to give a deeper insight into TWB. For example, the first review in early childhood education (ECE) was conducted with a total of 30 articles (Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014). The authors summarized frequently mentioned themes, including compensation, teachers’ education levels, satisfaction levels, and stress levels, as well as some less seen yet promising directions, such as self-efficacy and life satisfaction. The variety of themes, however, pointed to the fragmented conceptualization of well-being and the deficiency of a broader view and linkage with wider life issues. Additional considerations, mostly methodological concerns, were also pointed out, such as insufficient data locations, diversity of tools, and data sources. That review represents the first vital step toward describing the research status in a global context and outlines potential future directions of this field. To some extent, that review sparked the researchers’ passion for the topic and, thus, can be regarded as a milestone in the history of ECE TWB, even though, given the limitation imposed by the relatively small volume of articles and the fragmented themes, the review was unable to depict a systematic profile for the topic under investigation.

Witnessing the intensification of publications after the first review, some researchers paid attention to the search procedure and selection criteria used in that review study (Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014) and these were adopted by another review study (Cumming, 2017). A further 30 papers published between 2011 and 2016 were retrieved. The author first observed a downward focus on the relationship between compensation and TWB and an upward focus on the relationship with work environment. Improvements in several previously mentioned concerns, including diversified data location and measurement tool, were also reported (Cumming, 2017). Meanwhile, some problems still existed, such as fragmented conceptualization. For example, the consensus on the definition of teacher well-being has not been reached, despite broad agreement on a multidimensional construct of teacher well-being. Moreover, the essentials of teacher well-being have not been well identified. In the current literature, positive elements (e.g., job satisfaction) and negative elements (e.g., burnout) are very often used to understand teacher well-being (e.g., Cumming, 2017; Hascher & Waber, 2021). The 2017 review served as a fine supplement to the previous one, as it displayed the changes over time and broadened the data sources (i.e., participants). With a growing corpus over time, the author extracted and organized the associated themes in order for them to become more systematic. Nonetheless, the review only dealt with articles published between 2011 and 2016, missing the trends in longer terms.

Most recently, a systematic review was performed (Hascher & Waber, 2021) that utilized papers which were peer reviewed and published between 2000 and 2019. In total, there were 98 studies in the review. It revealed empirical evidence has not proven that there is a threat to TWB. Among the diversity of correlators and predictors of TWB that could be grouped into general as opposed to job-related classifications on the individual or contextual levels, social relationships appear to play an essential role. That review paper was distinct from the previous ones in that it distanced itself from frequency counting and chronological changes and presented the results strictly following the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) (Moher et al., 2009). The review also detailed the predictors, correlates, and outcomes based on the found evidence.

Together, all of these reviews have contributed significantly to TWB research and have addressed a broad range of topics, such as the definition of TWB and its related factors and outcomes. However, a quantitatively descriptive review is needed because previous reviews have exhibited four limitations and concerns. First, existing reviews have left out a detailed developmental trajectory of the intellectual development of TWB research, particularly with regard to the fact that the development of research methodologies over time is less understood. Previous reviews only introduced general information on methodology. Second, existing reviews have not covered articles on TWB since its emergence and the articles have substantially and continuously increased in recent years, especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (40.18%). The most recent review (Hascher & Waber, 2021) only included TWB publications until 2019. The number of articles is assumed to change the landscape of TWB research. Hence, the continuous increase in articles needs to be teased out. Third, some existing narrative reviews have left unclear which selection criteria were applied to the reviewed papers. For instance, the first review (Bricheno et al., 2009) only indicated the inclusion criteria, but did not mention the exclusion criteria and the number of publications included in the review. Fourth, suggestions have been made by the Campbell Collaboration Steering Group (2014) that every three to 4 years, systematic reviews need to be conducted within the social sciences field in order to provide essential updates. Therefore, an updated systematic review is needed.

The following three research questions were proposed:

  1. 1.

    To what degree has the volume of scholarship on teacher well-being developed and how has it been developed regarding the publication level, research localities, and topics of research within the period 1968–2021?

  2. 2.

    To what degree has the distribution of research type (for example, empirical, theoretical, and review) of teacher well-being research developed and how have these types been developed from 1968 to 2021?

  3. 3.

    To what extent have research methodologies (for example, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed) that scholars have employed in TWB evolved and how have they evolved during the period between 1968 and 2021?

Methodology

In order to make certain the qualified articles were systematically reviewed, there was an implementation of detailed and systematic steps. These steps were managed by the PRISMA guidelines (Moher et al., 2009).

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

In advance of conducting the systematic search and in order to make sure the articles retrieved were appropriate to the stated objectives, inclusion criteria were designed and clarified by the research team. First, journal articles were required to have been published from 1968 to 2021. Additionally, articles which were originally published online in 2021 were included. We completed the literature search by the end of March 2022. Based on our initial search, this time period was chosen due to the first journal article on TWB being published in 1968 (Edwards, 1968). Second, the research topic needed to be related to TWB or, at a minimum, to have dimensions or elements of TWB. Third, the research participants should be pre-service and in-service teachers across kindergarten to tertiary level. Fourth, published journal articles were required to have been peer-reviewed to ensure they were quality papers. Fifth, research papers needed to be written in the English language. Sixth, the research papers were required to be empirical research, review papers, conceptual, or commentary in their nature.

The following four exclusion criteria were used in this paper. The first criterion was that theses, conference papers, book chapters, books, and short and book commentary articles were not included. The second was that articles were not included if not written entirely in English. The third was that articles with insufficient or vague information in terms of literature review, methodologies, and results were not included. The fourth was that articles were not included if teacher well-being was only a marginal element.

Literature Search and Study Identification

Initially, a systematic search was conducted in early 2022 in SCOPUS to locate abstracts of studies which were potentially relevant using the keywords of educator* OR teacher* OR teaching* and well-being* OR wellbeing*. To prevent the possible risk of publication prejudice and qualified papers being omitted, two recommended strategies were employed by the research team. First, in Google Scholar, the research team searched for identical keywords of peer-referred articles that were published within the defined time period to locate lost articles or to address possible gray literature (Polanin et al., 2017). A snowballing procedure followed which was employed via an exploration of the previously mentioned reviews (e.g., Acton & Glasgow, 2015; Bricheno et al., 2009; Cumming, 2017; Hascher & Waber, 2021; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009) to examine the reference lists of the located articles (Dietrichson et al., 2017). 10,466 Articles, as a result, formed the initial corpus.

Data Screening

This current review opted to follow the PRISMA guidelines as stated in the literature (Moher et al., 2009; Polanin et al., 2017) using the following four steps. The first step was identification. Through database searching and complemented by articles from other obtained sources, a total of 10,466 articles were found. Attention was particularly addressed to topic relevance, exclusion of chapters in books, or commentaries and whether the entire article was written in the English language. The second step was screening in which one researcher would read all of the abstracts to make sure the articles were eligible in terms of relevance of the topic, educational level, study participants, types of research, and the language that was used. At this step, if papers, for example, managed to get through the employed SCOPUS filter, but had only studied the ways in which teachers might make improvements to students’ well-being, they were rejected. Accordingly, a total of 9646 papers were removed and 820 kept. The third step was eligibility when the same researcher downloaded the full articles and subsequently read them, so that a more detailed assessment could be made. Attention was particularly paid to whether TWB was situated in a central or a marginal role. Forty-six papers were as a result removed and 774 kept. The fourth step was inclusion. The whole set of the database was checked by the second researcher in order to ensure the accuracy of the previous procedures and article selection. 774 articles in total were retained for the subsequent analysis (see Fig. 1 for the related flowchart).

Fig. 1
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Flowchart of search and screening process

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Data Extraction and Analysis

This review’s methodology is classed as quantitative analysis. This method was selected as being the most suitable for recording the trajectory of a specific topic in the course of a given time period (Stone et al., 2004; Yang & Lee, 2019). The approach was applied in order to portray TWB research studies’ developmental patterns and variations that had occurred over the past 54 years. Articles that adhered to the pre-determined inclusion criteria were initially coded by employing a data extraction instrument which was self-developed in Microsoft Excel by the authors and designed for the research team (Chen, 2019; Chen et al., 2021b). This instrument was composed of the location of the data collected, the time of publication, research methodologies employed, the kinds of research undertaken, as well as the foci of the topics. It should be pointed out that in this review, the analysis of the methodological trends was considered as a primary goal, so that any methodological concerns could be addressed. Moreover, we used thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013) to code the research foci. The coding framework was developed based on the results of the review study by Hascher & Waber (2021) and the coding results of 774 articles were included in this review project. A two-level coding framework was established. The framework consisted of the nature (theory, definition, content, model, measure), antecedents (contextual, organizational, and personal), and effects (teacher, teaching, student, and school) of teacher well-being (Fig. 2). The articles focused on these themes were coded into the corresponding themes and sub-themes in our Excel data coding file. A coding table (Appendix 1) was provided to illustrate the coding procedure.

Fig. 2
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Coding sample

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We utilized the following efforts to ensure the reliability of the data analysis procedure. First, the instrument, which was accessible from the authors, was pilot tested on five of the chosen articles by two of the research team, and modifications were subsequently made to the coding form. Second, the two members also acted as the coders. One coder coded all articles, and the other randomly selected 2% (n = 15 out of 774 articles) of the articles to re-code to ensure the reliability. Third, discussions with the research team contributed to a better understanding of discrepant coding wherever it happened.

Results

This 54-year span of the review contained 774 articles on TWB research conducted between 1968 and 2021. The research team assessed the quantity of articles published in the course of this time period and scrutinized the distribution of articles by looking at the location of the collected data, the topics which were researched, the types of research undertaken, as well as the methodologies that were employed in the research studies.

Research Volume

We divided the 54-year duration into eleven 5-year periods. Databases demonstrated a constant increase during the last 29 years after the fluctuations in the first 25 years (Fig. 3). The earliest article located was published in 1968 by Edwards. Only a couple of articles were available until the sixth period (1993–1997), when the increment first exceeded 10 articles in a 5-year segment. Subsequently, an uninterrupted and even accelerating rise was found since this period. A peak was reached in 2021, namely 189 publications (24.42%). During the final time period, 476 or 61.50% of the publications constituted the greatest stake of the entire article corpus. Overall, the research studies conducted on TWB during the last 54 years have been continuously established and expanded. There have been significantly more visible contributions made by TWB researchers worldwide, especially during the last 9 years.

Fig. 3
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Trend of publication volume by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021 (N = 774)

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Data Localities

The computation of the data locations also generated a fascinating trend. In total, 76 countries and regions were identified in 671 articles (86.69%) with location details (Table 1). The upper 6 data locations were discovered as being, in first place, the USA with 110, or 16.39%; in second place, Australia with 71 or 10.58%; in third place, the United Kingdom with 67 or 9.99%; in fourth place were multiple countries with 52 or 7.75%; in fifth place, mainland China with 36 or 5.37%; and, finally, in sixth place was Germany with 34 or 5.07%. In fact, the top 6 regions accounted for around half of the articles with listed countries and regions (324, 48.29%). In addition to the top 6 centers of published research by society, regions ranked the seventh to the tenth (i.e., Finland, Canada, Hong Kong, and Italy) occupied around 14% of the whole volume. The remaining 66 areas (254, 37.83%) also contributed outstandingly to the total research output.

Table 1 Trend of data location by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021
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Research Foci

The retrieved articles were coded and labeled into mainly two levels according to their research topics. There were three key research topics existing at the first level: the nature of TWB (298, 38.5%), the antecedents and/or correlates of TWB (577, 74.55%), and the effects of TWB (141, or 18.22%) (Table 2). To delve deeper into the major topics, several sub-themes were identified. Under the initial theme, the nature of TWB, there were five sub-themes. The first one was theories of TWB (163, 54.70% out of 298 articles studying the nature of TWB). Sub-theme number two was well-being definitions and TWB (132, 44.30%). Sub-theme number three was TWB’s components (82, 27.52%) (e.g., stress by Hepburn et al., 2021; depression by Braun et al., 2020; and work engagement by Weiland, 2021). Sub-theme number four was the models of TWB (25, 8.39%) (e.g., the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model by Corr et al., 2017; and Multicultural Model by Suárez, 2022). Sub-theme number five was the measure of TWB (28, 9.40%) (e.g., the Teacher Well-being Scale by Rebolo & Constantino, 2020; and the Basic Psychological Needs at Work Scale by Catalán et al., 2018). The second major theme, namely antecedents of TWB, included three secondary themes. The first secondary theme was contextual antecedents (57, 9.88% out of 577 articles studying TWB antecedents) (e.g., social crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic by Sulis et al., 2021). The second secondary theme was organizational antecedents (342, 59.27%) (e.g., relationships with colleagues by Chan et al., 2021). The third secondary theme was individual antecedents (381, 66.03%) (e.g., self-efficacy by Zhang et al., 2021). The third major theme, effects of TWB, consisted of four sub-themes. Sub-theme one was the personal outcome of teachers (92, 65.25%) (e.g., teacher turnover intention by Zhang et al., 2021). Sub-theme two was teaching practice (25, 17.73%) (e.g., teacher–student interaction by Seo & Yuh, 2022). Sub-theme three was the outcomes of students (32, 22.70%) (e.g., students’ well-being by Madigan & Kim, 2021). Finally, sub-theme four was the school-level outcomes (9, 6.38%) (e.g., organizational performance by Pagán-Castaño et al. (2021) (Table 2 and Fig. 4).

Table 2 Volume of publications by themes during 1968–2021
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Fig. 4
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Trend of research foci by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021 (N = 774)

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The emergence of research about antecedents was the earliest among the three themes occurring in the first level (1968–1972). In general, a positive trend is rather obvious in this realm, except for two interruptions with 0 output in the third (1978–1982) and fifth periods (1988–1992). An early start and an accelerating speed led to a total number of 577 articles (74.55%) until 2021, the greatest share among the three themes. In particular, in the last period, which had only 4 years, the number reached 365 (63.26% out of 577) which is more than three times that of the past 5 years. Like the topic of nature, the distribution among the three sub-themes of TWB antecedents was not comparable. More than half of the papers in this area held relevance to personal (66.03%) and school-level antecedents (59.27%), while only 9.88% talked about contextual factors.

Noteworthy, research about the effects of TWB occupied the smallest portion (141, 18.22%) of all papers. The first study in this strand did not appear until the sixth period (1993–1997), and the number grew steadily with a slower speed in the following years. Among the sub-themes, it appears that researchers had more preference for the effects of TWB on teacher personal outcomes (92, 62.25% out of 141), while only 9 studies (6.38%) focused on school-level outcomes.

Research Type

The allocated articles were initially categorized into three broad types. These are displayed in Fig. 5 and studies were classed as being empirical, review, and conceptual/commentary. Over the past 54 years, the 693 (or 89.53%) empirical studies signified the considerable bulk of the worldwide knowledge base of TWB, followed by 44 (or 5.68%) review studies and 37 (or 4.78%) conceptual or commentary papers (Fig. 5). Over a period of time, empirical studies have predominantly been favored by researchers when they have chosen to research TWB. In general, there has been a steady rise in the number of the three categories of articles. Although empirical studies emerged first, they did not appear in large numbers until the ninth 5-year interval (62, 8.01%) and then the number increased by almost three times during the last decade (145, 18.73%) (426, 55.04%). As for review studies, the first study was produced in the fourth period. There were no review studies after that until the ninth period (2008–2012) with two review studies (0.26%) and the numbers increased over 200% in the last two periods (10, 1.29%) (31, 4.01%). The trend of conceptual/commentary papers is more stable. There was only one (0.13%) conceptual/commentary paper in the sixth and seventh periods, which gradually increased to 19 (2.45%) over the last 4 years. The research team concluded that empirical studies have been the dominating first choice for researchers to facilitate their research within the TWB field during the last 54 years. Despite the relatively small number, encouraging trends of increasing review studies and conceptual/commentary studies can be found especially in the most recent 9 year (See Fig. 6).

Fig. 5
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Trend of research type by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021 (N = 774)

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Fig. 6
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Trend of research method by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021 (N = 693)

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Research Methodology

Independent follow-up analyses for each method were created. Initially, papers considered as being empirical were categorized as to whether the methodology they employed was qualitative, quantitative, or mixed. Secondly, the research team scrutinized those dependent on quantitative or mixed methods into five distinct levels of the statistical methods that were used. Thirdly, the quantity of qualitative data collection procedures utilized when qualitative and/or mixed methods were used was assessed. Fourth, we divided the articles with qualitative techniques into different clusters according to the number of techniques used in each article.

Firstly, the researchers classed empirical papers as to whether they applied qualitative, quantitative, or mixed research methodologies. The overall majority of researchers who study TWB have been shown to prefer employing quantitative methods. In the 693 assessed empirical studies, 483 or 69.70% of them were observed to have used quantitative methodologies. These were followed by 119 studies (or 17.17%) that applied qualitative methodologies. Mixed methodologies were employed by 91 (or 13.13%) of them. Mixed methodological design investigating TWB did not make an appearance until the fifth interval (1988–1992). It also showed a steady increase after an interruption in the sixth period with 0 studies. The number increased at a relatively slower pace and grew to 58 studies (8.37%) in the last interval, although at present, can only be considered to be a small amount of the entire corpus.

Secondly, the research team delved into the subset of quantitative publications in order to ascertain the statistical levels that the quantitative studies had reached. The data were subsequently coded into five varying levels of statistical methods. These followed a revised version of a classification scheme used in a past study (Wu & Chen, 2018) (Table 3). A persistent increase in the quantity of studies was discovered for each of the levels of the statistical analysis within each of the 5-year intervals. Level-5 statistics (221, 38.50% out of 574 articles) ranked highest in frequency of use, as revealed in Fig. 7. These were followed by Level 4 (139, 24.22%), Level 2 (104, 18.12%), Level 3 (74, 12.89%), and Level 1 (31, 5.40%). Considering Level 5, only two research studies used Level-5 statistics during 1968–1987 (the first four 5-year intervals). After some slight fluctuations during the following period, the number of such articles kept rising and reached its fastest speed in the last three periods. There were similar trends in the other four levels.

Table 3 Modified descriptions of five statistical levels from Hallinger (2021)
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Fig. 7
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Trend of statistical level by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021 (N = 574)

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Thirdly, the employment of qualitative data collection procedures in qualitative studies, namely 119 or 17.17%, and mixed method research, namely 91 or 13.13%, was analyzed. The utilization of the upper 6 qualitative data collection procedures by 5-year intervals over periods of time is presented in Table 4. Generally speaking, interviews, as well as qualitative questionnaire surveys were found to be the prevalent collection techniques during the whole time period, while during the past decade, additional and varied techniques have been implemented. During the fifth period, just one article (0.48% out of a total of 210 articles employing qualitative methods) utilized a qualitative method in order to collect the data. Since the tenth period, which was between 2013 and 2017, increased diversity was found to be apparent in qualitative methods. These included reflective reports (1, 0.48%), case studies (4, 1.90%), classroom observations (5, 2.38%), qualitative surveys (6, 2.86%), focus groups (8, 3.81%), and interviews (19, 9.05%). This trend seems to have continued. There was a striking increase evident in the final interval in the total number of qualitative studies and individual qualitative methodologies.

Table 4 Trend of frequency of top 6 qualitative data collection technique by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021
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Fourth, the research team analyzed the occurrence of qualitative data collection procedures which were employed within the qualitative studies as indicated in Table 5. The data indicate that during the 1960s and 1990s (1968–2002), studies that used multiple qualitative data collection techniques were only one-fifth as prevalent as those that used a single data collection technique. In the last two decades included in the review, the studies used multiple qualitative collection techniques more often, although still less frequently than a single technique (1: 0.25 ratio).

Table 5 Trend of frequency of qualitative data collection technique by the 5-year interval during 1968–2021
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Discussion

We discuss the major findings, interpret the major findings, and propose recommendations for future research.

First, with regard to the volume of 774 articles, although not considered to be extraordinary, it attained the “critical mass” level required in order for this systematic review to be conducted (Chen et al., 2021a). The volume of articles on TWB showed a continuous increase over the last 29 years after fluctuations in the first 24 years, the increase commencing in 1993 and reaching a peak in 2021 (189, 24.42%). Before the 2000s, only a handful of articles (30, 3.88% before 2000) on TWB were published. One prominent systematic review (Bricheno et al., 2009) on TWB suggested increased attention to it. The volume of TWB research has emergingly increased in the last three intervals. During the final time period, publications (476, 61.50%) accounted for the largest stake of the complete article corpus. It is worthwhile mentioning that the number of articles (311, 40.18%) accelerated since COVID-19 occurred in 2020 and 2021. This has signaled that TWB, as a research field, has attracted much attention in recent years. This trend points to a significant change happening within the field. For future projections, the trends included in this review indicate that an increased and balanced intellectual approach will be used for future TWB research, but we are uncertain whether this encouraging trend is actually a temporary circumstance because of the unforeseen pandemic or whether scholars have become mindful of its essential role within education. Furthermore, it seems that no review studies have been conducted after the pandemic. A recent systematic review (Hascher & Waber, 2021) focused on a total of 98 studies published between the years 2000 and 2019. Therefore, periodical observations are needed for future studies in order to monitor the evolvement of TWB research. Basically, the trends identified in the current study forecast a more balanced development in teacher well-being research.

Second, data location was found to generate an interesting trend with two main observations. The first observation is the ‘leading outlier’ societies. As noted, the current TWB literature is highly skewed by contributions from a small number of ‘leading outlier’ locations (e.g., the USA, Australia, the UK, mainland China, and Germany) that have produced approximately half of the total knowledge corpus of TWB. This phenomenon could have been the result of contextual developments of different societies as it has been acknowledged in the literature that the production of knowledge is conditional upon scientific description. According to the literature (Chen et al. 2020; Hallinger, 2021), this needs to be broad as well as deep in its exposure from the standpoint that societies and regions differ due to cultural, economic, political, and social diversity, thus mitigating against broader generalizations. Taking the second ‘leading outlier’ Australia as an example, largely attached to contextual environments, scholars from Australia have explored many aspects of well-being within the education sector (e.g., McCallum for TWB in 2017; Riley et al. for principal well-being in 2021), which could possibly have been a direct result of Australia’s leading scientific status. The second observation is that considerable inter-regional variation was detected. TWB studies are greatly skewed by the research which has been conducted in relatively few countries (for example, Australia, the UK, and the USA). These countries are active in academia, sharing a number of similarities but they also have large differences. The inter-landscape variation has also been apparent between many countries that are less active in academia (for example, Nepal, Brunei, and Serbia with one study each, 0.15%) and many areas provided no voice. Such trends restrict us to characterizing a common intellectual structure worldwide and to framing the future challenges of stimulating both knowledge evolvement and research capacity as our knowledge base remains highly restricted to specific locations (Chen et al., 2020). One way to possibly satisfy the challenge of inter-society variation in future is for research capacity collaborations among scholars to be established over a number of societies so that scholars from non-leading outliers could gain support via collaborative projects, therefore, balancing and advancing knowledge production on TWB. However, it is acknowledged that, as the current review focused on the macroscope, the details leading to these two observations need to be further investigated in specific studies.

Third, research foci have covered the antecedents, nature, and effects of TWB in a descending manner. The emergence of research about antecedents was the earliest, in the first period (1968–1972), and has accounted for the largest proportion (e.g., Agg & Khimji, 2021; Aldrup et al., 2017; Jackson & Rothmann, 2005) among the three themes. Specifically, more than half of the papers with this focus have targeted personal (e.g., self-reflection practice by McKay & Barton, 2018; personality by Herman et al., 2021), school level (e.g., workload by Toropova et al., 2021; school-level professional training by Navarro-Espinosa et al., 2021), and contextual antecedents (e.g., COVID-19 by Kim et al., 2021; teachers’ social status by Mairitsch et al., 2021). Research targeting the nature of TWB (e.g., teacher stress model by Falck & Kilcoyne, 1985) first appeared in the fourth period (1983–1987) and has been continuously growing all these years. Research on the effects of TWB appeared later in the sixth interval (e.g., teacher absenteeism by Burke & Greenglass, 1995) and has grown steadily with a slower speed in the following years. The scope of the research topics that have been identified in this review seem to be convergent in addition to being divergent. When the convergent point of view is considered, the studies included and assessed in this review have generally focused on the three major themes. These themes are the antecedents, the nature, and the effects of TWB. These offer indications for realizing the intellectual structure of TWB. From the divergent perspective, the TWB field contains diverse topics, such as contextual factors (e.g., educational system by Jin et al., 2021), school-level factors (e.g., distance education requirement by Casacchia et al., 2021), personal factors (e.g., mindfulness by Hepburn et al., 2021), and effects on teacher personal development (e.g., teacher presenteeism by Kidger et al., 2021), teaching process (e.g., teacher–student interaction by Virtanen et al., 2019), students (e.g., student engagement by Wang et al., 2021), and schools (e.g., organizational performance by Wang et al., 2021). This finding demonstrates not only how important it is to prioritize the research agenda of TWB, but also the desirability of having a broad as well as a balanced scope in selecting topics for research purposes. This endeavor may assist in promoting and clarifying the disjointed conceptualization of TWB (Hall-Kenyon et al., 2014) as well as adding value to the importance of TWB with regard to organizational outcomes (Hascher & Waber, 2021). TWB theoretical perspectives should attract more attention as there are few theoretical as well as conceptual frameworks within the field (McCallum, 2020). Growth in tackling essential challenges necessitates continuous focus on these challenges as well as research gaps that will be reinterpreted and filled in future by other researchers (Cumming, 2017).

Fourth, expectedly, empirical articles appeared first and constituted the largest percentage of the chosen studies but also comprised much of the increased volume of studies published during the past 54 years. Until the ninth interval (2008–2012), there had been greater diversification of research type. The distribution of conceptual, empirical, or review articles was noticed to favor empirical investigations; however, this situation seemed, in the research team’s opinion, to be unbalanced. With regard to the stage of evolution of scholarship around the world, having a focus on the production of empirical research would seem to be reasonably suitable. Indeed, it has been claimed in the literature (Edmondson & McManus, 2007) that a sound knowledge base needs to be built upon a considerable collection of high-quality empirical studies. However, given the small number of reviews (44, 5.68%) and conceptual/commentary (37, 4.78%) publications, there is a solid requirement for high-quality systematic reviews to be conducted and conceptual efforts to be made on TWB that would, as a result, boost the quality of research undertaken in future. Three recommendations for future research are proposed. The first one is that a diversity of types of review studies would especially respond to the four limitations identified in the current reviews analyzed in this paper. The second one is that more high-quality conceptual papers are needed for the coming research agenda to form a solid theoretical framework and to clarify the fragmented conceptualization of teacher well-being definition. The third one is that more diverse designs are needed for the empirical investigations in order to advance the intellectual structure of teacher well-being research.

Fifth, quantitative method designs (483, 69.70%) have heavily dominated TWB research, followed by qualitative (119, 17.17%) and mixed methods designs (91, 13.13%). Although quantitative methods were found to be the most commonly employed, the findings of this review have exposed a more balanced allocation ever since the ninth interval between 2008 and 2012, and the employment of qualitative and mixed methods exhibited a noticeable increase during the past 14 years. Looking at the different levels of quantitative statistical techniques, the use of advanced modeling techniques (e.g., structural equation modeling, mediation, and moderation analysis) was found to dominate in quantitative or mixed method designs. After some slight fluctuations in the first eight periods, this trend kept rising and reached its fastest speed in the last three intervals since 2008. When analyzed in closer detail, most of the models were cross-sectional in their designs (462, 80.49%) and only 19.86% (114) of them employed a longitudinal design. Such findings further enhance our visualization of the research context as being largely immature but demonstrating emerging capacity and examples of research brilliance. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that most articles made use of first-person reports, for example, the participating teachers (83.62%) and 16.38% of the included studies only used one experimental research design. Several recommendations can be made. Firstly, applying a mixed method should be advocated in future studies, in order for more varied and trustworthy findings to be obtained (Creswell & Clark, 2017). Secondly, research methods appear to be balanced with regard to their diversification; however, an increase in studies employing either a longitudinal design or a reciprocal modeling design need to be incorporated within the subsequent research agenda, so that TWB research is brought to maturity (Edmondson & McManus, 2007). Thirdly, prevailing methods are overshadowed by first-person reactions; therefore, future investigations should consist of 360-degree data collection from varying stakeholders, including colleagues, pupils, and school management personnel. As suggested in one study (Goldring et al., 2015), such feedback from a number of sources characteristically involves the need for an increase in vigorous self-evaluation as well as parallel evaluations from an individual’s peers, subordinates, and superiors.

Sixth, examination of the use of qualitative data collection shows that interviews and qualitative surveys were initially prevalent and dominated throughout the period, while more various techniques were adopted after the tenth period (2013–2017). Additional qualitative data collection techniques were utilized either singly or by multiple means, and the methods of data analysis have also been extended. Reassuringly, the employment of qualitative collection techniques has been healthily developed. Three major recommendations are proposed. Firstly, additional higher-quality qualitative search designs are required, which will result in increased research being conducted into the nature as well as the effects of TWB and developing a conceptual model. Currently, these types of topics are not well developed. Secondly, there are insufficient innovative qualitative techniques to reliably evaluate and measure TWB (e.g., blood tests, body tests, and facial expression measurements) apart from self-reported methods. Thirdly, the most extensive qualitative data collection techniques tend to be predominantly retrospective as well as reflective in their nature (for example, life experience reflections, group discussions, interviews) that might provide unsatisfactory data as they are dependent upon accuracy and vividness as far as human memories are concerned (Phelps & Sharot, 2008). Therefore, methods including observations and machine monitors can accumulate first-hand, instant well-being experiences in real-life conditions and should be promoted.

Concluding Remarks

This review has provided significant contributions with regard to the current situation of TWB research. However, this review has two major limitations needing to be addressed in future. First, the patterns of knowledge production were this review’s focus which can be contrasted with the research findings’ content embedded within this article corpus. No effort was made in this review to exemplify what was reported in the findings and conclusions of the studies that were reviewed. Instead, the vibrant patterns of the field’s creation of a knowledge base have been presented in order to focus on this review’s predeclared objectives. Future research must critically examine the extensive findings of the corpus, especially in respect to the topic themes in addition to the content. Second, only articles which were written in the English language were included; therefore, studies which were published in a country’s first language were excluded in this review. These frame an important caveat for the review. It is acknowledged by the research team that the patterns, as well as the trends, could appear differently if this wide-ranging set of publications had been included in the review. However, such a scope is hard to achieve. One way to possibly compensate for this is for scholars to be encouraged to conduct a review of their home country’s publications by employing their country’s native language in order for the findings to be combined to reveal a complete visualization of TWB knowledge production.

To sum up, by portraying the dynamic trajectory of TWB research, this review opens our eyes to the challenges that remain ahead. A fast expansion of the quantity of TWB research around the world has been witnessed, providing a corpus of knowledge development that will assist researchers, educational practitioners, and policy-makers to structure their research and practice and, as a result, provide further contributions to a mature worldwide comprehension of TWB. This study’s results, however, also suggest that the development of international studies on TWB should continue at either the late emerging stage or the emerging intermediate stage to offer elements with regard to the location, the topic, the research type, the methodology, collection of data, and the techniques used for analysis. The research capacity to meet these challenges in the coming years needs to be addressed, respectively, in order to enable TWB individually and collectively.