Well-being concerns all of us and affects our daily lives (De Stasio et al., 2017). However, although it is often referred to as well-being, this concept is subjective and difficult to define (Soutter et al., 2014; McCallum et al., 2017). It is a psychological construct that refers to happiness, positivity, and resilience (Wigford and Higgins, 2019) and includes a feeling of wellness, where the person tends to feel happier, more devoted, more compassionate, understanding, and grateful (O’Brien and Guiney, 2021). Moreover, well-being is associated with positive emotions, perceived social support, and meaning in life (Pezirkianidis et al., 2021). It refers to a healthy emotional and physical situation with adequate emotional, cognitive, and behavioral resources to respond to difficult circumstances or conditions (Wigford and Higgins, 2019; O’Brien and Guiney, 2021).

Similarly, due to the complexity of the concept of well-being, it is difficult to provide a specific definition for teachers’ well-being, and as such several definitions have been formulated (Cann et al., 2020). According to Viac and Fraser (2020), teachers’ occupational well-being is a multidimensional concept, which is defined as “teachers’ responses to the cognitive, emotional, health and social conditions pertaining to their work and their profession” (p. 18). This plays an important role in the sustainability of the teachers’ profession, and those who make educational policies should ensure that the well-being of teachers is maintained high in their workplace (McCallum et al., 2017). When teachers’ well-being is high, it seems to be related to the effective management of the classroom (Sulla and Rollo, 2023), promoting supportive relationships between teachers and students, enhancing students’ well-being, and reducing their psychological stress, cultivating emotional intelligence, and promoting social learning (Hoglund et al., 2015; Harding et al., 2019; Jennings et al., 2019). Teachers’ well-being is enhanced when they feel that they are closer to their everyday work life and attribute a positive meaning to it, resulting in improved job satisfaction (Brady and Wilson, 2021; O’Brien and Guiney, 2021). Α positive working environment, appreciation of teachers’ work and effort, good communication among coworkers, and a higher sense of belonging in a supportive school, are central pillars of positive teachers’ well-being (Cann et al., 2020; Skinner et al., 2021), which influence not only the teachers’ life but also positively motivate students and shape a good learning climate (De Stasio et al., 2017).

The interest in well-being has increased considerably in recent years (Cann et al., 2020), and that is why the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommended instruments to measure teachers’ occupational well-being (Viac and Fraser, 2020). Such instruments are the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), which assesses satisfaction as a whole, the Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999), which assesses whether a person is happy or unhappy, and the PERMA Profiler (Butler and Kern, 2016) which will be used in the current research.

This instrument is based on one of the most influential theories that examine the overall sense of well-being and its elements, the PERMA theory (Seligman, 2011). This theory supports that there are five components of individual psychological flourishing. These components form the acronym of the name of the measure PERMA; that is, Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. The first component, Positive Emotions, involves experiencing positive emotions in everyday life; that is being able to focus on positive emotions such as happiness, comfort, and optimism and being able to view the past, present, and future in a positive way. According to Frederickson (2003), these feelings can be taught and developed. The second component, Engagement, includes being able to experience the psychological flow, be engaged, and feel satisfied with everyday activities. Engagement in everyday activities is important as it helps individuals learn, mature and foster their personal happiness. The component of Relationships involves feeling supported, accepted, and loved by an individual’s social network and helps individuals build positive relationships. Positive and strong relationships involve trusting others and giving or receiving support from social networks when it is needed, especially through difficult times. The fourth component, Meaning, concerns the feelings and beliefs of individuals that life is important and the importance of living a meaningful life and having a sense of purpose. When individuals are high in Meaning, they seek to find the real meaning in life instead of searching for pleasure and material wealth. The last component, Accomplishment, involves individuals’ satisfaction when they are able to accomplish their personal goals (Seligman, 2011; Symeonidou et al., 2019; Pezirkianidis et al., 2020, 2021). The PERMA Profiler provides both separate scores for each component and an overall well-being score (Pezirkianidis et al., under review).

In the literature, there are only a few studies that used the PERMA Profiler to examine teachers’ well-being. However, these studies showed that high levels of teachers’ well-being appear to have a significant positive effect in a number of domains (Turner et al., 2021). In a recent phenomenological study of Australian teachers’ well-being, carried out by Turner and Thielking (2019), teachers stated feeling less stressed, calmer, and more positive while teaching when they intentionally used positive psychology strategies in their everyday teaching practices.

Kun and Gadanecz (2019) in their mixed method study of 300 Hungarian teachers used the PERMA Profiler to measure teachers’ well-being and happiness within their workplace. Their research concluded that when teachers perceive their work in a meaningful way, engage in positive workplace relationships, and when there is an overall positive workplace climate, their perception of workplace happiness and well-being is affected positively. Furthermore, their study concluded that all dimensions of PERMA well-being, the psychological factors of hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism, were positively related to workplace happiness; a finding also supported by Kun and Gadanecz (2019). Zeng et al. (2019), in their correlation analysis study of 471 Chinese secondary school teachers, found a positive association with mindset, perseverance of effort, and work engagement when they used the PERMA profiler to measure teachers’ well-being.

Self-efficacy is a concept mentioned by many theorists and researchers (Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Bandura, 1997; Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) and concerns a person’s self-perceptions of their teaching ability (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Rotter’s Theory of Locus of Control (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) is a forerunner of self-efficacy theory, but this concept was extensively developed by Bandura (1997) in his Social Learning Theory. Self-efficacy, according to Bandura (1997, 2006), is defined as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (p. 3). According to the theory, self-efficacy is formed by four sources: (a) mastery experiences, (b) vicarious experience, (c) verbal persuasion, and (d) physiological and affective states. It concerns personal self-efficacy, which is the “personal value, ability, and effort that the individual puts into achieving a goal in relation to a certain condition of the environment” (Tzovla and Kedraka, 2023, p. 153), and outcome expectancy, which is the “estimation of the individual that a given behavior will lead to specific results” (Bandura, 1997, p. 193).

Gibson and Dembo (1984) used Bandura’s theory and identified two types of teachers’ self-efficacy. The first is Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE), which corresponds to personal self-efficacy. The second is General Teaching Efficacy (GTE), which corresponds to outcome expectancy. Tschannen-Moran et al. (1998) define it as “the teacher’s belief in his or her capability to organize and execute courses of action required to successfully accomplish a specific teaching task in a particular context” (p. 233) and note the importance of the active involvement of students including those with difficulties (Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001).

Teachers’ self-efficacy is a subjective concept shaped by the teachers’ interaction with their environment and affects their expectations, motivations, goals, self-regulation, educational behavior, teaching practices, attitudes towards the various subjects, and learning outcomes (Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Riggs and Enochs, 1990; Bandura, 1997; Shahzad and Naureen, 2017). Moreover, high self-efficacy is related to adopting innovation in teaching practice, increased support, encouragement, and autonomy of students (Caprara et al., 2006), and strengthening parental involvement in the educational process (Egyed and Short, 2006). Attending teacher professional development programs seems to positively affect its improvement (Aji and Khan, 2019; Mertasari and Candiasa, 2020; Tzovla and Kedraka, 2021; Tzovla et al., 2021a,b). In addition, teachers’ self-efficacy is documented to influence students’ self-efficacy (Trygstad et al., 2014), their behavior, and their performance (Shahzad and Naureen, 2017).

Note that “teachers do not feel equally effective in all teaching situations” (Goddard et al., 2000, p. 482), and given that self-efficacy concerns a specific task (Bandura, 1997, 2006), the measurement instruments of self-efficacy differ depending on the field of action and the target group (Bandura, 1997). For this reason, a number of tools have been constructed, such as the Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES) (Gibson and Dembo, 1984), which measures personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy; the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy (TSES) (Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001), which measures three parameters of the learning process teaching strategies, classroom management and student engagement; the Teachers’ Efficacy Beliefs System-Self (TEBS-Self) (Dellinger et al., 2008) which measures the level of teachers’ self-efficacy regarding tasks related to effective teaching and learning in their classroom context; the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI A and B) (Riggs and Enochs, 1990) which measures self-efficacy of in-service and pre-service elementary school teachers in Sciences.

Billett et al. (2023), in their research with 534 teachers in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicated that teachers’ well-being is positively related to self-efficacy. Self-efficacy was found to be associated with establishing classroom management systems and noted that teaching experience and age affect self-efficacy, with teachers who had been teaching for 15–19 years and aged 60–70 years having the highest self-efficacy. Moreover, Soykan et al. (2019), in a study with 1,502 teachers in New Zealand, found a positive relationship between teachers’ well-being and self-efficacy. Arslan (2018), in a study with 295 Turkish educators, found a positive relationship between the well-being and self-efficacy of teachers and vice versa. Worth noting that the relationship between self-efficacy and well-being has also been studied in relation to other aspects, such as job satisfaction and years of teaching experience (Lauermann and König, 2016; Toropova et al., 2020; Bartosiewicz et al., 2022), low student motivation, and lack of supervisory support (Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2016) among others.

The aim of the current study was to examine the influence of self-efficacy on the well-being of Greek and Cypriot primary. Teachers are required to hold a Bachelor’s degree in Primary Education in order to work in schools. Placement in private schools follows an independent application and interview process prior to employment, whereas placement in public schools requires teachers to enlist in the hiring catalog of the Ministry of Education, which is responsible for their employment (Eurydice, 2022). The process of entering public primary schools is time-consuming and may take a few years before teachers are placed. As such, many further their qualifications to attain a higher ranking in the catalog and ensure placement. Throughout their teaching career, teachers are mandated to participate in educational seminars and professional development programs in order to enhance their knowledge and skills in order respond to the ever-increasing pedagogical demands of their profession (Tzovla et al., 2021a).

Although the impact of self-efficacy on well-being is well documented in the literature, this research is significant due to the period it was conducted. Specifically, the current research took place during March and April 2023, a time when the education sector was returning to “normality” after the significant changes that took place because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is well documented in the literature that the changes caused by the pandemic created a lot of challenges for teachers at all levels (i.e., primary, secondary, tertiary) that inevitably negatively influenced their well-being. Research around the globe has shown that because of the changes that took place during the pandemic, such as changes in the way lessons were delivered (e.g., online, hybrid), affected teachers’ well-being, with several teachers showing signs of stress, anxiety, and even depression (see Kang et al., 2022, for a review). Similar results were also obtained from studies examining Greek-speaking participants. For instance, Papazis et al. (2022) found higher stress levels in primary school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Similarly, Raikou et al. (2021) found low self-esteem and medium anxiety in primary and secondary school teachers. Stachteas and Stachteas (2020) found that one-third of their secondary school teachers’ sample was feeling very anxious. Lastly, in a large study with 1,157 participants that included teachers, parents, and adolescents, Hatzichristou et al. (2021) found that teachers had a high tendency for anxiety, but importantly teachers also had high levels of coping with it. All of the above research was conducted during the period that the COVID-19 pandemic was influencing the education sector because of the different measures that took place to stop the spread of the virus, such as school closures and lockdowns. To our knowledge, no other study examined Greek and Cypriot primary school teachers’ well-being after the end of these measures. It was therefore considered imperative to conduct this study for a more comprehensive view of the well-being of teachers now that the pandemic is coming to an end.

Based on this aim and the existing literature, the following hypotheses were formulated:

A total of 258 primary school teacher participants took part in this study. The vast majority of the sample had a Greek nationality (77.9%), while the rest had a Cypriot (22.1%) nationality. The age of the sample ranged between 23 and 62. Namely, 85 participants (32.9%) were young-adults (23–39 years old), 93 participants (26%) were young-middle-aged adults (40–51 years old), and 80 participants (31%) were late-middle-aged adults (52 to 62 years old). Concerning education level, more than half of the participants (147 participants, 57%) had a Master’s degree, followed by 89 participants (34.5%) who had a Bachelor’s degree, and 22 participants (8.5%) had a Doctorate degree. Two hundred and twenty-four participants (86.8%) were employed in the public sector, and 34 participants (13.2%) in the private sector. Regarding years of experience, 121 participants (46.9%) had more than 20 years of experience, 45 participants (17.4%) had 16–20 years of experience, 38 participants (14.7%) had 11–15 years of experience, 18 participants (7%) had 6–10 years of experience, and 36 participants (14%) had 0–5 years of experience. For administrative duties, almost half of the participants (105 participants, 40.7%) reported that they never had administrative duties, followed by 69 participants (26.7%) who reported having daily administrative duties, 49 participants (19%) reported having administrative duties once per week, and 35 participants (13.6%) once per month. For other duties, almost half of the participants (119 participants, 46.1%) reported that they had duties once per month, 67 participants (26%) had daily duties, followed by 49 participants (19%) who reported having duties once per week, and 23 participants (8.9%) who reported that they never had other duties.

Upon receiving necessary ethical approval from the Cyprus National Bioethics Committee (EEBK EΠ 2023.01.11 18.01.2023), the measures used in this study were combined into a survey created via Google Forms. Data were collected via convenience and snowball sampling methods where teacher participants were asked to disseminate the survey to their colleagues between 23 March 2023 and 7 April 2023. Since this study involved primary school teachers, only the responses of participants working in primary education in Cyprus or Greece were included in the analysis. The questionnaire was distributed to the participants online using email, social chatting apps (e.g., WhatsApp, Viber, Messenger), and social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram). All participants were contacted online, informed about the purpose and duration of the study, and assured of their anonymity in participating. Their consent to participate in the research was received prior to completing the questionnaire. The completion of the questionnaire took approximately 15–20 min.

All data were entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, Version.

25.0 (SPSS 25, IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA), the level of significance for the tests was set to 5%, and all the necessary analyses were conducted. Normality tests showed that the data were approximately normally distributed, Shapiro–Wilk p > 0.005 and Kolmokorov-Smirnov p > 0.005. Since our data were normally distributed, we further conducted parametric tests. Descriptive statistics were computed. Subsequently, we conducted a Pearson correlation to examine the relationship between the factors of TSES and PERMA Profiler. Then ANOVAs were computed to compare the effect of age on self-efficacy and well-being. Lastly, all necessary assumptions to run a linear multiple regression were satisfied and it was computed to examine the predictors of well-being among teachers.

Although this research provides interesting results, it is not without limitations. First, most of the participants were from the Greek population. This limited us from comparing Greek and Cypriot teachers’ well-being. Additionally, the generalizability of the results of the study is also impeded as the education systems in Greece and Cyprus differ as compared to other countries in terms of the qualifications required for teaching in schools, the curriculum, and the structure of the schools. Moreover, we were not able to examine any possible differences between public and private education as most of our participants worked in public schools. Most of our sample had more than 20 years of experience, so we could not study possible differences due to teaching experience. Furthermore, our sample included more females than males. Even though the literature shows that more females than males work in education (Eurostat, 2023), this limited us from making comparisons between the sexes. Teacher reports regarding student engagement, rather than direct observations, and the use of self-report measures are among the limitations identified in the study, which should be considered with caution.

Based on the limitations of this study, possible suggestions for future research can be made. First, future research would be very interesting to examine the differences between Greek and Cypriot primary school teachers in terms of their self-efficacy and well-being. Furthermore, it will be worth comparing how different environments in public and private schools affect teachers (in their self-efficacy and well-being) and if there are differences in these fields between Greek and Cypriot primary school teachers. Also, it will be interesting to study if teaching experience could affect teachers’ self-efficacy and well-being and if there are differences in these fields between Greek and Cypriot primary school teachers. Lastly, future research should more thoroughly examine the relationship between self-efficacy in promoting student engagement and well-being and strategies that can be used to increase teachers’ self-efficacy in this domain.