With the emergence of the positive psychology trend, studying teacher resilience has gained tremendous momentum in mainstream education. Nonetheless, it has yet remained an underappreciated concept ...in English language education and research. The challenges that teachers experience in maintaining their resilience have also been the focus of a limited number of inquiries. To address these gaps, the present investigation set out to explore the challenges of sustaining resilience among Chinese and Iranian EFL teachers. In doing so, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to 18 Chinese and 15 Iranian EFL teachers, varying in age from 30 to 55 years old. Adopting a qualitative model of data analysis, the participants' responses to the open-ended questionnaire were analyzed through MAXQDA software. The analysis of Chinese and Iranian EFL teachers' answers resulted in the generation of 16 themes and 50 subthemes, demonstrating the challenges to teacher resilience. Findings indicated that both Chinese and Iranian EFL teachers perceived person-focused factors to be the major challenges of preserving teacher resilience. Other factors, including system-focused, context-focused, and process-focused factors, were conceived to be less problematic for teacher resilience. Finally, some major implications of the findings are presented and thoroughly discussed.
•It is revealed in the literature that teachers are among the important elements to successful teaching and they have a dynamic power in bringing about educational improvement.•Given the role of ...teachers’ emotional factors in the route of education, it is hypothesized that more issues such as creativity, loving pedagogy, and professional success can have a remarkable function in the academic path.•322 male and female EFL teachers who were teaching English in different provinces in China gave their consent to join the study.•Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized and this model included loving pedagogy predicting teacher professional success.•Mediation analysis evaluated the impacts of four subscales of teacher creativity in the relationship between loving pedagogy and teacher professional success.
It is revealed in the literature that teachers are among the important elements to successful teaching and they have a dynamic power in bringing about educational improvement. Given the role of teachers’ emotional factors in the route of education, it is hypothesized that more issues such as creativity, loving pedagogy, and professional success can have a remarkable function in the academic path while their role remains unexplored and much ambiguity still exists about the relationship among them. To this end, 322 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in different provinces of China gave their consent to join the study. As a result, they were asked to complete three questionnaires, namely, loving pedagogy, creativity, and teachers’ professional success. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach was utilized and this model included loving pedagogy predicting teacher professional success. Mediation analysis evaluated the impacts of four subscales of teacher creativity on the relationship between loving pedagogy and teacher professional success. Finally, some recommendations have been offered to language-teaching stakeholders in the EFL context to increase the expansion of educational research on various domains to trigger EFL teachers’ training programs that bring about teacher success and consequently students’ success.
Transparency of textbook activities, i.e., the degree of easiness for teachers to process and comprehend them, needs to be researched in terms of both materials
design
and materials
use
. This ...article reports on a study that investigates the impact of teachers’ professional experience and transparency of textbook activities (due to materials design) on teachers’ actual perception of the transparency of materials. The study adopted a mixed-methods design and collected quantitative data via a five-point scale survey from 115 secondary school teachers as well as interview data from 15 informants. Data analysis reveals that both teachers’ professional experience and transparency of textbook activities affect the degree of easiness teachers perceived as they understand and interpret the activities for pedagogical purposes. However, discrepancy exists between transparency in materials design and transparency in teachers’ perception. Lack of pedagogical knowledge about the relationship between teaching objectives, steps, and assessment and strong existing cognitive schemata developed from the stereotype of processing a familar set of teaching materials might hamper teachers’ perception of transparency.
The issue of early‐career teacher attrition is a pressing concern across a variety of educational settings. Research in predominantly anglophone contexts has shown that rates of foreign language ...teachers leaving the profession are particularly high. Noting the important role that well‐being plays in fostering teacher retention, this study examines factors affecting the well‐being of early‐career foreign language teachers in the United Kingdom and Austria, and the subsequent possible consequences for their decision to leave or remain in the profession, drawing a comparison across the 2 settings. In‐depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 early‐career foreign language teachers at secondary schools in Austria (n = 6) and the United Kingdom (n = 8). Inductive data analysis revealed an interplay among intrapersonal, societal, and contextual factors in relation to well‐being, which might contribute to shaping participants’ decision to remain or leave the profession across the 2 settings. These factors include perfectionism, self‐efficacy, work–life spillover, self‐regulation, relationships within the school, and foreign language teacher status. Our findings suggest the need for systematic approaches toward improving teacher well‐being, not only for surviving in the profession but also for flourishing and thriving in the long term.
In the discipline of teaching English, scholars and even language teachers have long been interested in foreign language teaching anxiety (FLTA). With the increasing proliferation of English as a ...foreign language (EFL), there is a lack of comprehensive research on FLTA among EFL teachers. Therefore, the current study examines FLTA among 48 EFL teachers during their postgraduate programme at a public university in Northern Cyprus. The current analysis included the administration of the Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (TFLAS) and interviews. According to the results, the participants experienced varying degrees of foreign language teaching anxiety, and anxiety levels do not correlate with participants’ gender and teaching. The findings also revealed that fear of making mistakes was the primary factor that could induce language teaching anxiety. This study contributes to the existing body of prior research on FLTA with valuable contextualised data that could help alleviate anxiety levels experienced by EFL teachers.
Educators have recently garnered significant focus for the crucial role they play, particularly concerning their emotions. These emotions have the potential to either boost their progress in their ...profession or hinder their progress, like burnout which may trigger or intensify poor mental health and quit the job. Burnout arises from the intermittent occurrence of emotional distress among English as a foreign language (EFL) educators as they fulfill their professional duties. To shed more light on the issue, it is fundamental to contemplate the teacher's belief in their capabilities, known as self-efficacy, which can reduce the probability of burnout and prevent work-related stress while also promoting beneficial results. Moreover, it has been evidenced that the vital role of educators' well-being is prominent in this procedure. Therefore, the importance of these two constructs concerning the impact they have on teacher burnout was taken into consideration in this study. To achieve this objective, a group of 403 English educators participated in the measurement of the concepts being studied. To scrutinize the causal connections between the variables, a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach was employed. The study showed that teachers' efficacy in their ability to perform their job effectively was responsible for explaining 82 % of changes in burnout, while their level of well-being played a role in accounting for 42 % of changes in teachers' burnout levels. The data disclosed that while every factor independently contributed to burnout, the self-efficacy of the teachers held greater influence as a predictor of burnout in comparison to their well-being. Ultimately, particular academic suggestions are specified.
Teachers have come under significant scrutiny due to their pivotal role in educational context and lately, the study of emotion-connected aspects in teachers' education domain has got much attention ...and experts in this domain proved that emotion is at the center of teaching subjects. Also as teaching is an emotionally challenging occupation, it often results in high levels of stress and consequently burnout which has become a prominent concern in mainstream education in recent years. As the main issue of education, teachers' emotions should be taken into account as their positive emotions and their regulation have been highlighted in the literature. Therefore, the study underscores the critical significance of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' well-being and emotion regulation and their relations to burnout. To fulfill the research objectives, 398 English teachers participated in the assessment of the studied concepts. The findings, analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), reveal that both variables significantly contribute to the reduction of job burnout in teachers. This study discusses key findings, implications, and limitations while also offering suggestions for future research directions.
This paper reviews evidence on teachers’ resilience (TR) and wellbeing (TWB) on foreign language teaching enjoyment (FLTE). This review improves the understanding of the multi-dimensional, dynamic ...and context-dependent structural attributes of TR and TWB, as well as the relationship between them and the FLTE. The literature review verifies the positive effects of teachers’ positive optimism, self-efficacy, positive teacher-student relationship, teacher support and pro-social dynamic classroom environment on TR and TWB under person-context interaction, and also confirms that TR and TWB have predictive effect and significant impact on personal enjoyment, social enjoyment and student appreciation of FLTE three-factor structure. Some important findings from the review verifies the important role of teachers’ social enjoyment in the three-factor structure and the dominant role of prosocial situational characteristics in predicting FLTE. This paper finally explains its pedagogical significance and provides some suggestions for expanding the research on antecedent variables related to FLTE.
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