Promoting Teachers' Wellbeing Through a Serious Game: Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence from the Teaching to Be Project

Teachers’ mental health is increasingly acknowledged as essential for effective teaching and positive educational outcomes, yet interventions specifically designed to support it remain limited. This paper presents the Online Well-being Course (OWC), a serious game developed to enhance teachers’ mental health through gamified experiential and reflective activities. A mixed-methods design combined quantitative evidence from a pre-post intervention involving 151 Italian teachers with qualitative data on the experiences of 189 Italian teachers. The intervention produced improvements in social-emotional competence and self-efficacy, together with reduced perceived stress. Qualitative findings further revealed positive changes in relationship skills, emotional competence, decision-making, social awareness, self-care strategies, and school climate. Findings support the potential of serious games to strengthen teachers’ psychological resources and inform innovative approaches to teacher professional development.