The symposium presents different studies focusing on the topic of well-being in schools.

In this framework, well-being is intended as “subjective well-being”, meaning “[…] the positive and negative emotions that people experience, or the level of self-reported satisfaction that people have about features of their lives” (Daly & Posner, 2011, p. 21).

The starting assumption is that schools are organizations in which well-being is a functional object of the system that, through interactions and interconnection of individuals acting within the organization, is enhanced, promoted and shared. Another basic assumption is that schools have a significant role as organizations in promoting teachers, students and all the other school actors’ well-being.

The four papers here presented, show experiences of researches and research-actions in different European and extra-European contexts, namely Switzerland, Sweden and Canada.

The first paper presents a study conducted in the Italian-speaking region of Southern Switzerland (Canton Ticino), focusing on teachers’ well-being and burnout. The research project involves all school grades and aims at mapping the problem of teachers’ burnout all over the region, and identifying preventive actions against work-related stress and burnout.

The second paper presents the Swedish experience with social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. It is shown how teachers change and why, through a work with a Swedish SEL program. The paper presents results from a thematic analysis of the process diaries of teachers involved in teacher training in SEL in Sweden.

The fourth paper presents results of a study undertaken in Southern Switzerland, which investigate personality traits, perceived social support from family and friends, school achievement and subjective assessment of quality of school life in relation to Life Satisfaction.

The third paper is focused on students and presents a measure for children and early-adolescents well-being: the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) assesses children’s well-being, social and emotional development, health, nutrition, sleep, social relationships, assets, and time use. This measure was developed, implemented and validated in Canada; it has been translated into Italian and applied in the Italian-speaking region of Southern Switzerland (Canton Ticino).