Happy together: Multilevel associations between adolescents' and teachers' school-specific subjective wellbeing

Abstract

International literature indicates that adolescents' subjective well-being (SWB) is associated with their academic and social-emotional development. Teachers are a central source of social influence on adolescents' school-specific SWB. However, little is known about the multilevel associations between adolescents' and their teachers' school-specific SWB, especially in collectivist cultures. This international collaborative study examined the multilevel associations between adolescents' and their teachers' school-specific SWB. Using a stratified random sample from a public secondary school in China (n_student = 1181, n_teacher = 44), we surveyed teachers' and their students' school-specific SWB and general SWB (i.e., satisfaction with life and general self-efficacy). Random-intercept-only multilevel models were fitted to delineate the cross-level associations between teachers' (Level-2 predictors) and adolescents' overall and dimensional school-specific SWB (Level-1 outcomes) while partialing out adolescents' general SWB and demographics (e.g., student gender, age). Significant within-class similarities were found in adolescents' overall and dimensional school-specific SWB (i.e., joy of learning, student school connectedness, academic self-efficacy, and educational purpose). At the class level, teachers' school-specific SWB and teaching experience were positively associated with adolescents' school-specific SWB. At the individual level, adolescents' school-specific SWB was positively associated with their life satisfaction and general self-efficacy, but not with their demographics. Implications of findings and future directions are discussed to inform researchers, practitioners, and policymakers about the significance of multidimensional measures of SWB and a whole-school approach to promoting the SWB of an entire school population (e.g., students, teachers).