Browsing by Author "Alina, Soldan"

The purpose of this thesis is to find out, how variety of teachers’ physical activities, teachers’ personal feelings towards exercise, and their physical activity, both during workday and free time, are related to teachers’ wellbeing at work and vitality. Physical activity and exercise are known to improve overall wellbeing, and it is also scientifically proven in many researches. That was also my hypothesis in this study, but I was curious to find out more personal reasons and significances by hearing teachers’ own experiences and views. It was also interesting to find out how teachers’ personal life situations as well as outside factors impact teachers’ vitality and attitude towards exercise. The working hours can be long and that in-creased my curiosity to study this subject. The results are well aligned with previous studies. There were five teachers participating in this study in total. Four of them were class teachers and two of them were subject teachers. All teachers interviewed for the study were women. Their age was in between 25 to 52 years old. The interviews were conducted, and data collected in between December 2020 and August 2021. I used a half-structured qualitative method, and executed themed one-on-one interviews, which I transcribed afterwards. I executed the analysis by doing a data-driven content analysis with a qualitative research approach. According to the study results, teachers participating in the study experienced that their physical activity was positively linked to their wellbeing at work. Subjective relationship to exercise had some different meanings and aspects during life. Teachers were eager to add more physical activity due to its various benefits to wellbeing and coping at work, including mental wellbeing and social aspects.