The workplace PERMA-profiler: wellbeing of compulsory school teachers

Abstract

Teaching can be stressful, and great demands are placed on teachers. In Iceland, as in many other countries, there is a teacher shortage. A report from the VIRK vocational rehabilitation center in Iceland points out that teachers are among the largest groups of workers requiring their services. Stress, high demands, and mental strain in this profession frequently lead to teacher burnout, with negative consequences at individual and societal levels. Therefore, it is critical to maintain and increase the wellbeing of teachers in Iceland and to promote positive work experiences for the country’s compulsory school teachers. A quantitative study was conducted to measure teachers’ wellbeing at work, based on the PERMA model, which falls within positive psychology, a field geared towards identifying what makes life worth living.

The aim of the present study was twofold. First, to translate the workplace PERMAprofiler from English into Icelandic and to test the scale’s reliability and validity, and secondly, to use the scale to measure the wellbeing of Iceland’s compulsory school teachers.

The measuring instrument is based on Seligman’s PERMA theory of wellbeing, which was developed to combine hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing. Wellbeing is viewed in terms of five factors: positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment. The workplace PERMA-profiler includes an overall measure of wellbeing based on the five factors, questions about negative emotions and loneliness, and a question about overall work satisfaction. To measure the profiler’s validity, a question about overall happiness in life was added to the questionnaire. The workplace PERMA-profiler was translated into Icelandic and pre-tested before it was used to collect data from members of the Icelandic Teachers’ Union (N = 4847; response rate 42%). The reliability of the results was acceptable to good in the range of 0.70–0.86 for individual factors and 0.89 for the overall wellbeing scale. The correlations between the PERMA factors and the question measuring general job satisfaction were higher than between those factors and the question measuring overall happiness. This indicates that the instrument provides valid results and measures wellbeing at work rather than wellbeing in general. The average of the wellbeing factors was over 6.5 out of 10, except for those factors that address a negative experience. The factor of meaning had the highest average of the wellbeing factors (M = 8.4), and in addition, the highest proportion of teachers gave that factor a high score (8 or higher), while the lowest proportion awarded the factor of accomplishment a high grade. Generally, wellbeing was higher among those over 60 years of age than among those aged 40 or younger. It was also higher among women than men. The lower wellbeing scores of the youngest group of teachers are a cause for concern both among individuals and in society at large. We all want teachers to feel good about their profession, and we recognize the importance of keeping them in the profession of working with children, using their experience and further developing their expertise as highly educated and trained professionals.

The workplace PERMA-profiler can be used to help improve the wellbeing of a workforce because it indicates the areas in which intervention is needed, and, with regular use, reveals whether intervention has the required effect. For the teaching profession in Iceland, this is extremely important because of the continuing shortage of qualified teachers. We recommend further studies of the Icelandic version of the workplace PERMA-profiler, which could be a useful tool for many other professions.