School well-being has become a central goal of contemporary educational reform, yet its realisation remains challenging in resource-constrained rural schools. Guided by UNESCO's Happy Schools Framework, this study explores how rural Indian elementary school teachers experience and negotiate school well-being within their everyday professional contexts.
An interpretivist qualitative design was employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven experienced elementary school teachers from rural schools in West Bengal, India. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify patterns across teachers' lived experiences and generate context-sensitive interpretations of school well-being.
Four interrelated themes emerged: relational strain and trust erosion, pedagogical rigidity, governance and psychological safety and aspirations for context-sensitive school well-being. The findings reveal constrained happiness, where governance pressures, organisational culture, limited teacher agency, and socio-economic challenges hinder school well-being. From these insights, the study proposes the Governance–Culture–Agency–Practice (GCAP) framework, demonstrating that supportive governance, collaborative culture, enhanced teacher agency and context-responsive pedagogy jointly create the organisational conditions necessary to strengthen school well-being in rural schools.
This study contributes a context-sensitive conceptual framework that extends the Happy Schools Framework by moving beyond the identification of happy school characteristics to explaining how school well-being may be strengthened through interacting institutional processes. The GCAP framework offers an organisational perspective that integrates governance, institutional culture, teacher agency and pedagogical practice, providing practical guidance for policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators seeking to enhance school well-being in resource-constrained rural settings.
