Enhancing higher education teachers' teaching processes and well-being

"After teaching, I just sat on the floor and gasped."

The project examines the relationship between higher education (HE) teachers’ pedagogical competence and well-being. We focus on learning-focused teaching (LFT), where teachers pay attention to the quality of teacher-student and student-student interactions to activate students’ prior knowledge and their own thinking. In the LFT approach, teachers flexibly use a wide range of teaching and assessment methods to engage and activate their students according to the situation and are able to reflect on their own actions in the teaching-learning situation.

HE teaching has remained largely under-researched from the perspective of teacher well-being. From a well-being perspective, we focus on stress and the risk of burnout, teaching satisfaction and emotions. We will examine teaching processes and well-being both on a general level (how teachers typically teach) but also in specific teaching situations. We collect different type of data from the participating HE teachers, including survey data, psychophysiological data via Moodmetric smart rings, experience sampling data and video-recorded data from teaching sessions.

During the project, an intervention will be developed to help teachers develop their LFT processes and wellbeing. More specifically, the intervention will provide tools to use LFT methods and help teachers to reflect on their own teaching using Guided Reflection (GR) and Mindfulness-Based practices (MBP). The intervention is expected to influence teacher well-being positively. THEwellbeing intervention will be developed and implemented in collaboration between educational researchers and experts as well as with the support and guidance of national and international collaborators.

Project group

Liisa Postareff (coordinator, Häme University of Applied Sciences)
Petri Nokelainen (vastuullinen johtaja, Tampere University)
Anna Parpala (vastuullinen johtaja, University of Helsinki)

Häme University of Applied Sciences HAMK