Happy teacher, healthy class? Linking teachers’ subjective well-being to high-school and university students’ physical and mental health in a three-level longitudinal study

This study focused on the relationships between teachers’ subjective well-being, perceived teacher support and students’ subjective mental and physical health. We surveyed students at the beginning, halfway, and at the end of the second semester, collecting 1230 observations clustered within 410 students. Additionally, 66 of their teachers rated their subjective well-being (teaching self-efficacy and life satisfaction) at the beginning of the semester. We used multilevel modeling to link teachers’ subjective well-being to students’ health and perceived teacher support, controlling for the effects of time. Teaching self-efficacy positively predicted students’ mental health. Moreover, perceived teacher support had a positive association with both subjective physical and mental health reported by students across the semester. We found inconclusive results in testing the associations between teachers’ subjective well-being and perceived teacher support. We also found non-significant associations between teaching self-efficacy and students’ physical health, as well as life satisfaction and students’ mental health.