Feeling good and functioning well: A scoping review of factors associated with teacher wellbeing in mathematics education

Abstract

Teacher wellbeing is a critical concern in education systems worldwide, yet research has largely relied on generic, discipline‐agnostic approaches that fail to account for the distinctive professional demands of subject teaching. This scoping review addresses the resulting gap by synthesising existing research on teacher wellbeing in mathematics education, a context characterised by unique disciplinary pressures, pedagogical challenges, and societal expectations. Through the systematic analysis of 37 peer‐reviewed studies published between 2004 and 2024, the review draws on research with both primary and secondary teachers of mathematics to map how teacher wellbeing in mathematics education has been conceptualised and investigated, identifies the factors that support and undermine it, and examines both its hedonic (feeling good) and eudemonic (functioning well) dimensions. Findings reveal that teachers of mathematics navigate a distinctive professional landscape in which subject knowledge and pedagogy, disciplinary identity, professional relationships, institutional conditions, and students' mathematical dispositions and outcomes collectively shape teachers' experiences of wellbeing. Using the hedonic and eudemonic distinction as the primary lens for wellbeing, and distinguishing between factors applicable to all teachers, regardless of subject discipline, and those specific to teaching mathematics, the review proposes a preliminary framework for understanding teacher wellbeing in mathematics education as a discipline‐specific construct. The framework captures both what teachers of mathematics share with the broader teaching profession and what is genuinely distinctive about their professional wellbeing, providing an empirically grounded foundation for future research and a basis for developing more targeted professional support, institutional policy, and teacher preparation programmes that honour the unique demands of teaching mathematics.

Rationale for this study: Teacher wellbeing is a global priority, with mathematics teachers facing acute attrition pressures worldwide. Generic teacher wellbeing frameworks overlook subject‐specific professional demands, yet no review has systematically examined these in relation to mathematics teachers' wellbeing.

Why the new findings matter: The findings reveal a distinctive professional landscape unique to mathematics teachers' experiences of wellbeing that generic frameworks cannot adequately capture.

Implications for researchers, practitioners and policymakers: The field of mathematics education currently lacks the shared language and conceptual tools to recognise and respond to subject‐specific wellbeing challenges. Teacher educators, school leaders, and policymakers can draw on this preliminary framework to develop discipline‐specific wellbeing literacy across schools and teacher preparation programmes. For researchers in mathematics education, the framework offers direction for further inquiry; for researchers in other disciplines, it offers a transferable model for analogous discipline‐specific approaches to teacher wellbeing.