Dear Colleagues,

Teachers play an essential role for the community through the education and training of young people, the adults of tomorrow. Teaching skills as well as teacher’s well-being are both key factors of any successful education system. Beyond transferring knowledge, teachers contribute to the way students learn to socialize and to their personality development, including shaping their critical thinking skills and scientific reasoning; teachers also act as significant role models for students. Along with these important responsibilities bestowed upon them, this large group of professionals are exposed to specific occupational risks at school, which are mainly psychosocial (e.g., students’ behavioral problems, time pressure), but not exclusively (e.g., infectious risk, noise exposure). Although an abundance of research on teacher health exists throughout the world, data are of variable quality, and partly inconsistent, due to differences in socioeconomic and cultural contexts and differences in methodologies used. Further, new concerns have been raised by the COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the education community especially hard as of Spring 2020. Identifying opportunities to promote not only teachers’ health, but also school health and public health as a whole, has become even more pressing. 

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on the current state of knowledge on teachers’ well-being, the determinants of their health, and the repercussions at the society level, both in a “normal” (pre-pandemic) time and now, in the COVID-19 era. We welcome various paper formats for this Special Issue, including original research papers, reviews, case reports, and conference papers. Other manuscript types accepted include position papers, brief reports, and commentaries. All must combine a high academic standard coupled with a focus on practical implications for school health. 

We will accept manuscripts from different disciplines, including epidemiology (observational/interventional studies), exposure assessment science, sociology, psychology, etc. Below are some examples of topics that could be addressed in this Special Issue, though the list is not exhaustive, and we are happy to receive papers on additional related topics:

• psychosocial factors of teachers’ well-being (social support, school violence, effort–reward imbalance, etc.)
• School building characteristics and environment (noise, indoor/ambient air pollution, greenness, social environment, etc.) and teachers’ well-being
• Long-term changes in teacher well-being compared to other professional groups
• Risk of COVID-19 infection among teachers/teachers’ mental health throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
• Attitudes, knowledge, and practices of teachers with respect to the epidemic risk (universal masking, hesitation about vaccination, etc.)
• Teachers’ voice disorders
• Interrelation between teachers’ and students’ health

Dr. Marie Noël Vercambre
Dr. Sofia Temam
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Teachers
• Health/well-being/quality of life
• Psychosocial factors
• School environment
• Noise
• Air pollution
• COVID-19 pandemic
• Teacher–student interrelation
• Professional–private interplay
• Sick leave