The changes in education systems brought about, among other reasons, by digitalization and the societal transformations, have been imposed in all countries.
In 2016, in the form of "pilot projects", Portugal began to make curricular and organizational changes aimed at encouraging school autonomy to better respond to different audiences in different contexts. The recent legislative changes have highlighted, especially through the evaluative study of this policy (Cosme, Ferreira, Lima & Barros, 2021), the need to "monitor, as systematically as possible, some of the critical points of a process as demanding as this one" (p.106).

This communication addresses the relationship between the development of autonomy and curricular flexibility policies and the professional engagement and well-being of teachers in educational contexts. The research underpinning this paper is part of a cross-cutting, interdisciplinary, collaborative project that brings together researchers from different areas - education, sociology, and psychology - and different generations, as well as teachers from schools with different pedagogical-didactic situations, with an emphasis on reflection and direct action. The concepts involved in this project have been studied by themselves, but never all together by the same instrument. Therefore this approach allows an analysis of the different levels of involvement applied in a specific professional situation.

This study regards the period from 2016 to 2023, considering that the world has also faced a change in times: the time of digital, the remote teaching, and the pandemic. In these new times, it is also schools and teachers who have introduced new terms, concepts, times, and workspaces to their professionalism, taking into account the priority of combating the growing inequalities between students. The complex nature of teachers' work is a challenge to teacher well-being and teacher burnout has been recognized as a problem worldwide (Salmela-Aro, Hietajärvi, & Lonka, 2019). 
The benefits of well-being seem to go beyond psychological advantages for individuals and employee retention for institutions, as evidenced by studies in different organizations. These are diverse not only because well-being favors the development and maintenance of relationships between teachers and students, but also because it stimulates the establishment of a positive learning climate and teacher well-being, which, in the words of Jennings and Greenberg (2009), plays a central role in both the school environment and learning.

According to the literature, well-being influences the quality of the teacher-student relationship, classroom management and the effective application of social-emotional education (Carvalho et al., 2021). In addition, teacher well-being is linked to a variety of desirable elements and outcomes, including teacher retention, positive teacher-student interactions, and student performance (Dreer, 2023). 
Professional engagement is a relatively new concept when applied to teachers, in terms of work expectations and commitment to tasks. Some authors define professional engagement as an enthusiastic state of involvement of the individual in crucial and personal activities, which is diametrically opposed to burnout.

Understanding the complex dynamics between curricular autonomy, teacher well-being and teaching engagement will help to characterize educational policies within the scope of Curricular Autonomy and Flexibility in Portugal, in the period 2016 - 2023; to identify professional engagement and well-being of teachers in the context of curricular autonomy and flexibility policies; and to prepare a comparative analysis to be applied in the future in the various intervention contexts.

Based on the question "What links exist between the development of autonomy and curricular flexibility policies and the work engagement and well-being of teachers in educational contexts?", this study is part of a mixed-method investigation (quantitative and qualitative) and has several dimensions (curricular autonomy, professional engagement and teachers’ well-being). The combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches makes it possible to broaden and deepen the results, which, through the triangulation of techniques, provides diversified readings and a multiplication of analysis perspectives (Dal-Farra & Lopes, 2013). Since the aim is to study the relationship between the proposals for curricular autonomy, the engagement of teachers in this process, which began in 2016, and teachers’ well-being, the most appropriate methodological approach will be developed in two phases in order to allow triangulation between theory and practice. Although the study to be developed includes other phases, namely intensive studies in the form of multiple case studies, in this communication we will only focus on the preliminary phase of document analysis and the development of the necessary instruments for the extensive study that the research entails, presenting its first results, which are part of phase 0 and phase 1. Phase 0 - Document analysis - focuses on: i) legislation framing the educational/curriculum policies of the years 2016-2023 ii) “gray literature” and other reports produced in this period on the object of analysis Phase 1 - carrying out an extensive study - using a questionnaire that makes use of previously defined and validated scales - The Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF; Keyes, 2006; Portuguese version by Matos et al, 2010); The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, UWES-S (Schaufeli et al., 2002; Portuguese version by Sinval et al., 2018); adapted from Estudo Avaliativo da Autonomia e Flexibilidade Curriular (Cosme, Ferreira, Lima & Barros, 2021). This questionnaire is focused on three dimensions, namely: i) Teachers' perceptions of autonomy and curricular flexibility ii) Subjective well-being iii) Teachers' professional engagement The Ecological Approach to Teacher Agency developed by Priestley et al. (2015) will be considered, as the authors propose the analysis of teacher agency through the interactions that occur between three domains that promote the realization of agency: i) iterational (related to the teacher's beliefs and convictions and their personal and professional life experience); ii) practical-evaluative (related to cultural, structural and material factors); iii) projective (what teachers imagine as the future in the short and long term).

The expected outcomes are: a) to understand whether there is a direct relationship between curricular autonomy, which the system aims for, and teachers’ well-being. b) to further analyze the extent to which curricular autonomy develops feelings and actions of greater engagement and accountability in decision-making about the curriculum and, therefore, the school. c) to reflect on whether teachers' decision-making autonomy in many aspects of curriculum management is experienced as an extra-responsibility stress factor or used for their professional development. d) to identify the presence of teacher agency in its various domains.

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