Abstract:

Purpose:
The study aims to investigate teachers’ perceptions of the role school principals play in promoting their well-being. The teachers in Israel have a low professional self-image and work under stressful conditions (Jepson & Forrest, 2006; Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). Psychological well-being combines feeling good with functioning effectively (Huppert, 2009). Promoting well-being can reduce stress and enhance efficacy at work. However, little research has been done on the role of the school principal in nurturing teachers’ well-being.

Methodology:
This is a qualitative study with a personal interpretive paradigm of teachers' reflections. Data collected from 53 teachers and analyzed it in a four-stage process: Condensing, coding, categorizing, and theorizing. We encoded and categorized the data according to Golman, Boyatzis and McKee’s (2004) emotional intelligence, leadership competence.
Findings indicate that school principals can play an important role in promoting teachers’ well-being by displaying highly developed emotional intelligence (EI).

Implications:
Educational leaders have to understand the importance of the well-being of teachers. In order to improve teacher efficacy, they must establish a supportive emotional climate, a derivative of EI. We used EI theories to explain these findings, and made suggestions for further research.

Originality/Value:
The study contributes to the epistemology of school principals as to the importance of promoting the well-being of teachers and about the importance of developing their own emotional intelligence in order to be able to promote well-being.

Keywords:

School principals, teachers’ well-being, emotional intelligence.