Teacher wellbeing is critical for effective implementation of positive education programs (Quinlan 2017; Slemp et al. 2017). Yet, few studies have explored teachers' experiences of wellbeing, and how to enhance their wellbeing, beyond a focus on their individual practices. This case study examines teachers' perceptions of leadership practices that influenced their wellbeing in an urban high-school in New Zealand. Purposive sampling was used to select three 'high wellbeing' and three 'low wellbeing' teachers, who then participated in semi-structured interviews and completed a wellbeing journal. This article focuses on the leadership actions that teachers identified as enhancing their well-being (feeling valued, meaningful professional development, agency in decision making) and the essential skills leaders demonstrated (relationship building, contextual competence, social and emotional competence) that influenced teacher wellbeing. A model of positive school leadership is presented which outlines recommendations for leaders to enhance teacher wellbeing.

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Wellbeing in schools is often focused at the individual level, exploring students’ or teachers’ individual traits, habits, or actions that influence wellbeing. However, studies rarely take a whole-school approach that includes staff wellbeing, and frequently ignore relational and organizational level variables. We take a systems informed positive psychology approach and argue that it is essential to build greater understanding about organizational and relational influences on wellbeing in order for schools to support educator wellbeing. Our study evaluated the relative contributions of individual, relational, and organizational factors to educator wellbeing. Our measure of wellbeing focused on the life satisfaction and flourishing of 559 educators in 12 New Zealand schools. We used a social network analysis approach to capture educators’ relational ties, and demographic data and psychometric scales to capture individual and organizational level variables. Results of hierarchical blockwise regressions showed that individual, relational, and organizational factors were all significantly associated with educator wellbeing; however, it was educators’ perceptions of trusting and collaborative school conditions that were most strongly associated with their wellbeing. The number of relational ties educators had explained the least amount of variance in wellbeing. Educators were more likely to experience high levels of support when their close contacts also experienced high levels of support. However, for many educators, there was a negative association between their most frequent relational ties and their reported levels of support. Our results suggest that attending to the organizational factors that influence wellbeing, through creating trusting and collaborative school conditions, may be one of the most influential approaches to enhancing educator wellbeing. We call for whole-school approaches to wellbeing that not only consider how to support and enhance the wellbeing of school staff as well as students, but also view the conditions created within a school as a key driver of wellbeing within schools.

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