Teacher well-being interventions are overlapped and multifaceted in the literature, spanning positive/flourishing, deficit, and professional frameworks, complicating researchers' and practitioners' understanding of how and why interventions work. This review provides a novel categorization using these tripartite frameworks for evidence-based teacher well-being interventions, offering conceptual clarity for theoretically coherent future research. Following PRISMA guidelines, 30 peer-reviewed studies (2012-2024) representing 23 interventions were analysed, examining their theoretical foundations and mechanisms. Analysis revealed six intervention categories: mindfulness-based (n = 11), professional well-being (n = 2), emotional intelligence/SEL (n = 2), cognitive-behavioural (n = 2), positive psychology (n = 5), and relaxation-based (n = 1). Professional well-being showed the largest gap: appearing in 17 intervention purposes but only 2 programmes explicitly grounded in professional theories, revealing professional well-being can function within positive and deficit frameworks. Programmes like mindfulness-based interventions dominated, employing multi-dimensional mechanisms despite their predominantly positive theoretical focus. These patterns reveal programmes contain cross-framework mechanisms beyond theoretical status, indicating current classifications inadequately capture intervention functioning within this tripartite framework. (CRD42024565514) • Novel categorization reveals tripartite framework intersections in wellbeing interventions. • Professional wellbeing operates through positive and deficit frameworks. • Core component analysis needed to explain intervention mechanisms. • Mindfulness programs multidimensionality nature questions its purely positive theoretical foundation. • Literature gap: interventions function across frameworks beyond stated theory.
Alsayed et al. (Wed,) studied this question.