Educational systems face interconnected challenges: declining student mental health and rising teacher burnout, particularly in high-pressure academic contexts. While positive teacher-student relationships are foundational to student academic and emotional outcomes and teacher well-being, existing interventions adopt individual-focused approaches that fail to leverage relational dynamics through which well-being naturally emerges in social interactions.


This research aims to investigate positivity resonance—moments of shared positive emotions, mutual care, and behavioral synchrony—as a relational mechanism uniquely suited to address these challenges. As teacher burnout compromises the capacity to provide one-way emotional support, this approach builds upon the reciprocal nature of teacher-student relationships, where positivity resonance operates bidirectionally, benefiting both simultaneously. The study examines whether structured practices cultivating these micro-moments accumulate over time to promote sustainable outcomes across individual, relational, and classroom levels.


A longitudinal mixed-method study will involve approximately 200 Chinese high school students (ages 15-18) and 20 teachers assigned to intervention and comparison conditions. The 8-week intervention integrates shared positive emotions (positivity journals, appreciation circles), mutual care (focused acknowledgment), and synchronous practices (loving-kindness meditation). Analyses will employ pre-post comparisons, multilevel modeling to capture nested data structures, and mediation analyses to test relationship quality as a mechanism linking intervention to outcomes.


The study is expected to demonstrate intervention effects at multiple levels: enhanced individual well-being and personal resources for both students and teachers, strengthened teacher-student relationship quality, and improved classroom climate and collective resilience. Findings are anticipated to show that relationship quality mediates intervention effects on individual outcomes, while repeated micro-moments of positivity resonance accumulate to generate emergent collective benefits.


This research extends positivity resonance theory to hierarchical educational relationships, advancing understanding of how interdependent well-being processes address individual and systemic challenges. Findings may inform relationship-focused approaches that promote sustainable well-being within educational systems and generate mutually beneficial outcomes for teachers and students.