In this paper we address a paradox in the Finnish comprehensive schools: the success in international assessments concerning pupils’ learning outcomes and at the same time an increasing national concern about the well-being of school communities. There are indications of earlier social exclusion, rise of depression symptoms among girls, and negative attitudes against school among boys. (Välijärvi & Linnakylä 2002; Välijärvi et al. 2007) Respectively teachers are facing various challenges in their work, e.g. heterogeneous groups of pupils, ill-being of families’ deriving from growing social inequality, accelerating cycle of school reforms. (Vandenberghe & Huberman 1999.) In order to understand and deal with the paradox we suggest a transformative concept of pedagogical well-being (PW). PW refers to a need for meaningful, coherent and supporting learning for both teachers and pupils in the school context (Huusko et al. 2007; Torsheim et al. 2001). PW is constructed – or left unconstructed – by both teachers and pupils, in the interaction processes during every school day. Theoretically the PW is defined by combining latest theories of learning and well-being. Both of these have lately adopted more holistic and systemic approaches. This refers to a multidimensional, process-oriented and interactive view on human action. People are studied as active agents in the real-life complex contexts. Learning and well-being are seen as interactive, tool mediated processes between environment, communities and individuals. In this process individual’s own interpretations and attributions play a significant part. We assume that learning and well-being are parts of the same developmental process that is strongly regulated by agency. In this paper we concentrate on the teachers’ pedagogical well-being which we assume to have significant consequences to the pedagogical well-being of pupils (Huusko et al. 2006; 2007; Pelletier et al. 2002). More specific, we explore pedagogical situations and –processes that teachers identify as exhausting or on the other hand energizing in their daily work.

This paper reports a multiple case study (n= 9 case schools) that is a part of the larger national research and development project on undivided basic education (abbreviation: UBE) (2004-2009). The main aim of the research project was to study and analyze preconditions and processes that enable schools to develop a culture of learning and thought, in which collaboration and active self-regulative learning are emphasized. The research data in this paper is a part of the multiple case study design in where the selected group of class-, subject- and special education teachers (n=68) from the nine case schools were theme-interviewed. In this theme-interview teachers reflected their teaching, pupils' learning and school's pedagogical development.

The preliminary results reveals, that teachers’ pedagogical well-being is constructed in three primary contexts of their daily work: teacher-pupil(s) interaction, peer teacher interaction and home-school interaction. The most significant primary context is the interaction with the pupils. Especially teachers described situations where they have succeeded or failed to promote meaningful learning in teacher-pupil interaction. The situations teachers interpreted as energizing typically showed strong agency and holistic approach to the problem at hand. Teachers used solution strategies that covered the whole school day and also exploited pupil’s life outside school. On the other hand in the situations teachers interpreted as exhausting their agency was week and they felt deprived of solution strategies, causing strong emotions of helplessness. It seems that those pedagogical solutions and actions that took both the didactical and pedagogical learning goals and more general social goals into account where also less exhausting for the teachers. Based on results it seems that moving from teaching to learning demands that [subject] didactics as a part of schools’ pedagogical practices should be approached in a more holistic way. Also teachers’ pedagogical well-being rely on their readiness to deal with social questions as embedded part of their pedagogical and didactical expertise.