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L2 Teachers’ Emotions: A Sociopolitical and Ideological Perspective
Abstract
Following the sociocultural turn (e.g., Zembylas in Teaching with emotion: a postmodern enactment. Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, CT, 2005a) in teacher emotion research, we explore second language (L2) teacher emotions from a critical perspective. Such a perspective extends Benesch’s (Considering emotions in critical English language teaching: theories and praxis. Routledge/Taylor & Francis, New York, 2012) examination of teacher emotions from a broad sociopolitical perspective and De Costa and Norton’s (Mod Lang J 101-S:3–14, 2017) recent call to investigate social issues that L2 teachers face in light of neoliberal impulses within education. We also argue that critically-inflected teacher emotion research needs to take into consideration the social ecologies in which teachers are embedded. As Khong and Saito (Educ Rev 66(2):210–225, 2014) rightly observe, teacher emotions are shaped by social, institutional, and personal forces, a point that is instantiated in Wolff and De Costa (Mod Lang J 101(S1):76–90, 2017), who illustrated how the emotions of their focal teacher were shaped by macro-level (e.g., language policy), meso-level (e.g., the school environment), and micro-level (e.g., teacher identity) forces. Building on these developments, we trace how two Mathematics teachers in English medium of instruction high schools in China and Nepal, respectively, managed their emotions as they used language and other affordances to accomplish their pedagogical goals and accommodate students’ diverse needs in these two distinct contexts.
... A growing body of research is ecologically studying language teacher emotions (e.g., Authors, 2022;De Costa et al., 2018;Hofstadler et al., 2021;Mercer, 2020). This line of research posits that to examine the multiple layers underpinning language teacher emotions, different individual and contextual factors that impact language teacher emotions at multiple levels, including the micro-level of the classroom, the meso-level of the school, and the macro-level of society need to be taken into account. ...
... This line of research posits that to examine the multiple layers underpinning language teacher emotions, different individual and contextual factors that impact language teacher emotions at multiple levels, including the micro-level of the classroom, the meso-level of the school, and the macro-level of society need to be taken into account. This observation has been highlighted in previous research in the context of Content and Language Integrated Learning teachers' well-being experiences in relation to students and socio-educational particularities in Hofstadler et al. (2021), the ecologies of teaching shaping Maltese teachers' well-being in Mercer (2020), and the interconnection between personal, professional, and sociopolitical resonances shaping teachers' emotions in De Costa et al. (2018). It emerges from this body of knowledge that an ecological perspective helps researchers capture how teachers' professionalism is shaped and defined by interdependencies surrounding their work, which is the theoretical perspective we adopt to study LAL through the lens of CIs. ...
... The major issue here was that overemphasis on success in the matriculation exam has profoundly influenced the teachers' professional practice. Scholarship on LAL and CIs has attested to the interconnection among different institutional and sociocultural layers as shaping teachers' professional work (Authors, 2022;Bruster & Peterson, 2013;Lengeling & Mora Pablo, 2016;Lo & Leung, 2022;Sun & Zhang, 2022;Yan et al., 2018), especially the ecology-invoked nature of teachers' emotions (De Costa et al., 2018;Hofstadler et al., 2021;Mercer, 2020). However, our teachers argued that this interaction has become a discourse in terms of teachers' assessment practices and their orientations to teach to the test, especially troubling the connection between assessment and teaching. ...
Despite the substantial growth of research on language assessment literacy (LAL), the emotional side of LAL has been under-researched. In response to this gap of knowledge, the present study explored Iranian English language teachers' LAL through the lens of emotional critical incidents (CIs). Drawing on an ecological lens as embedded in a case-study design, data were collected from narrative frames, classroom observations and post-class discussions, and semi-structured interviews. Data analyses revealed three personal, institutional, and so-ciocultural ecologies that shaped the teachers' LAL-related emotional CIs and the associated sense-making, practice, and perceptions about assessment. In particular, we found that the emotional side of LAL is defined by agency, emotion labor, the need for voice, and broader discourses of assessment in Iran. Based on the findings, we provide implications for running professional development courses that build on teachers' LAL and account for emotions as a key component of such courses.
... Similarly, the lack of resources such as multimodal teaching materials compromised the teachers' sense of autonomy, and they experienced anxiety over using English to teach mathematics. Based on these findings, De Costa, Rawal and Li (2018) argue that there are significant power inequalities between the micro (individual teachers), meso (school), and macro (society) levels. ...
... The teachers experienced this as a particularly onerous linguistic burden. Similar to what De Costa, Rawal and Li (2018) found in the contexts of China and Nepal, the institutional requirement put the teachers in the situation of taking up extra labour, which had implications for their emotional well-being. For example, they were frustrated by the extra efforts they had to make to avoid losing face before their students, but they were reluctant to discuss their frustration with school administrators and the students themselves because of the perception that they should know English, which in turn created emotion labour for them. ...
There is a dearth of knowledge on the emotional challenges content-area teachers in English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes face, and how they manage their emotions in their efforts to negotiate a top-down language policy. This paper examines the entangled emotional experiences of EMI content-area teachers in Nepal's school education. In contrast to a psychological approach to teachers' emotions, this article draws on sociocultural and ideological perspectives on emotions to unpack a connection between emotions, institutional language policies, language ideologies, identity, and teacher agency. The analysis of EMI teachers' emotional dynamics essentially identifies their emotions as 'entanglements', reflecting the interconnectedness of emotions with other variables such as language ideology, identity, and agency in content-and-language-integrated education. The findings of this study showed that teachers' limited English proficiency led to negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, fear, frustration, and shame), stimulating them to use English-Nepali bilingualism as a creative strategy to manage their emotional challenges and also to exercise their agency in response to their students' needs. However, their translanguaging strategy-which otherwise might have included the students' home language, Bhojpuri-was restricted by hegemonic language ideologies. The findings show that multilingual teachers typically do not experience emotions in a vacuum but in response to other social phenomena. The paper supports the argument that teacher emotion management is not an apolitical process but is rather ideologically and discursively constructed and situated. ARTICLE HISTORY
... A number of developments have contributed to growing interest in an ecological approach on language teaching and, more specifically, on language teacher emotions (e.g. Authors, 2023;Benesch 2017;2018;De Costa, Rawal, and Li 2018;Loh and Liew 2016). This increasingly vibrant line of inquiry has explored the impact of sociocultural and ideological factors on teacher emotions by highlighting the sociopolitical and contextual dimensions involved in teaching. ...
... This argument was more noticeable in the indirect influences of expectations on teachers' emotional well-being (Mercer 2021). The micro-level discourses that were argued to create cultures of professionalism are a clear manifestation of how the dynamics of professional practice intersect with power relations to shape teachers' expected and experienced emotions (De Costa, Rawal, and Li 2018;Zembylas 2002). These findings add to the body of knowledge on language teacher emotion labour by bringing to the fore two aspects (i.e. ...
This study adopts a critical-ecological perspective and examines English language teachers' emotion labour in a professional development course structured around sharing emotion-bearing situations (EBSs). Data were collected from 10 Iranian teachers via online discussion, reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews. Data analyses revealed that the teachers' EBSs were connected to micro-level (classroom), meso-level (institution), and macro-level (society) particularities that came to influence their agency and emotional well-being through a discursive enactment of power. Moreover, the teachers engaged in surface and deep acting as well as the expression of naturally-felt emotions to mask and regulate their emotions relative to various participants and discourses. Based on the findings, we argue that EBSs are closely connected with the way history, culture, and power come to shape institutional performances and teachers' attendant emotion labour. We discuss implications for teachers and teacher educators, and suggest ways to tap emotions within a socio-educational landscape to positively contribute to the overall emotional development of various stakeholders.
... However, L2 teachers face unique emotional challenges as they teach in a language that is not their own or their students', often leading to anxiety and uneasiness (Lee and Lew 2001). Despite the importance of emotions in language teaching, research on L2 teacher emotions is limited, with earlier studies primarily focusing on language teacher anxiety (De Costa, Rawal, and Li 2018;Lee and Lew 2001). However, in line with the positive psychology movement, recent L2 research has expanded to include a broader range of positive emotions, employing more sophisticated research designs and data analysis methods (Dewaele and Li 2020). ...
The purpose of this research was to explore the reciprocal associations between teachers’ grit, foreign language teaching enjoyment (FLTE), and work engagement using a cross-lagged panel design. In addition, the role of teacher self-efficacy as the predictor in the model was also examined. A sample of 786 English as foreign language (FL) teachers were recruited as the participants. The results of a cross-lagged analysis showed the reciprocal relations between the constructs. More gritty teachers at first assessment point showed further FLTE at the second point. Also, teachers who demonstrated further engagement at Time 1 showed greater degrees of FLTE at Time 2. Furthermore, higher levels of FLTE at Time 1 also led to greater levels of grit and engagement at Time 2. Finally, teacher self-efficacy positively predicated grit, FLTE, and work engagement just at Time 1, revealing that teacher self-efficacy failed to significantly predict the three latent constructs five months later.
... In recent years, there has been a new line of research into foreign/second language (L2) teachers' psychological functioning (De Costa et al., 2018;Liu & Chu, 2022;Xu, 2018). In this research, teaching has been seen as an emotional endeavor in which teachers' emotions are associated with their quality of teaching and personal wellbeing (Bao et al., 2022;Dreer, 2022). ...
https://staging.journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00315125231182269
We tested an assessment model, by which teacher self-efficacy, perceived school climate, and psychological wellbeing at work, might predict teaching enjoyment. We invited a convenience sample of 355 teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) to respond to four online questionnaires. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to check the scales’ construct validity and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test associations among the variables. Our results showed that teacher self-efficacy, perceived school-climate, and psychological wellbeing were direct predictors of foreign language teaching-enjoyment (FLTE). Teacher self-efficacy affected FLTE indirectly, as induced by psychological well-being. School climate also indirectly influenced FLTE, as mediated by teacher self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing, with school climate a direct predictor of teacher self-efficacy and psychological wellbeing. Teacher self-efficacy directly affected psychological wellbeing. We discuss implications of these findings for teacher-education programs.
... One of the challenges associated with gaining knowledge of emotions is that they are difficult to conceptualize due to the complexities of emotions (Zembylas, 2007). Research on teacher emotions has shown that teachers' emotions profoundly impact their teaching approaches (De Costa et al., 2018), as well as their interactions with students and others . The emotional experiences of teachers are a factor in both the retention rate and turnover rate of teachers (Gu & Day, 2013). ...
The participant in this study was an English teacher who also held the position of vice principal, and the researchers investigated the complications involved in the construction of a teacher's identity for a teacher of English in Indonesia, representing the expanding number of English instructors. This study used an integrated perspective to investigate the development of English teacher identities, drawing insights from Barcelos' (2015) theory of the relationship between teacher beliefs, teacher identity, and teacher emotions. The approach of narrative inquiry was utilized for the analysis of the data. By conducting an exploration of the life histories of the participant who had learned English and gone on to become an English teacher, this study was able to capture the dynamics of how the fundamental beliefs and feelings of the focused participant interacted with one another and formed the identity of the teacher. This was accomplished by focusing on how the participants had learned English and gone on to become English teachers. To reach this goal, the life stories of individuals who had previously studied English and gone on to become English instructors were investigated.
... Previous research has found heightened emotions in both teachers and students in Second Language Learning (SLL) and EMI classrooms as well as in EME university social spaces ( Benesch, 2017 ;De Costa et al., 2018, 2020bDing & Benesch, 2018 ;Hillman, 2022 ;Hopkyns, 2020 ;King & Ng, 2018 ;West, 2019 ;Yuan, 2021 ). For example, in the context of China, Yuan (2021) found complexities in EMI university teachers' emotions. ...
Although theory and research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practitioners have grown recently, there is little documented research on their emotions and identities. This study explored the emotion of 12 Iranian EAP practitioners and their role in their identity construction. Adopting a narrative inquiry methodology, the study examined the practitioners’ emotions across the Zembylas’s (2002) three-dimensional framework of teacher emotions and their role in the practitioners’ identity construction. Data analyses revealed that while the practitioners consider recognition from students as contributive to their positive emotions and identities, sociocultural-ideological discourses and power relations negatively influence their emotions and identities. Such idiosyncrasies were viewed to create huge dissonances between the practitioners’ self-images and their professional sense-making at personal, interpersonal, and macro-structural levels. The study offers implications regarding EAP practitioners’ emotions and identities situated within sociocultural localities of EAP instruction.
This study explored the negotiation of a Chinese EFL teacher’s teaching identity in light of recent critique of neoliberalism. Ms. Q, our focal participant, worked in a private English school that commodified English, and her main teaching responsibility was to prepare students for the IELTS test. We adopted an agency-centered approach to explore how Ms. Q’s professional identity was negotiated in relation to the exercise and investment of her professional agency. In particular, Haneda and Sherman’s (2016) job-crafting perspective on teacher agency was adopted to illustrate how Ms. Q was able to go beyond the prescribed teaching role assigned by the school. This move, in turn, contributed to her teacher identity development because she was able to exercise agency within the affordances and constraints of the given work context. Our data include classroom observation, interviews with Ms. Q and her students, Ms. Q’s teaching materials and her posts in a Chinese social network (Wechat). Our findings revealed that Ms. Q’s investment in constructing the desired teacher identity, that is, to be a good educator, supported her to transcend the prescribed space for teaching practice and make agentic decisions in the classroom that were in accordance with her teaching beliefs.
In this chapter, I analyze ideologies of the de facto English-as-the-medium-of-instruction policy in Nepal’s school level education system. By situating the current language policy in Nepal’s multilingual context, I also discuss how this policy reproduces social inequalities between the rich and the poor, and how it negatively affects children’s access to the academic content. My analysis shows that the current de facto English language policy is shaped by two major ideologies – English-as-a-global-language and English-as-social-capital – that ignore the local multilingual and multicultural realities surrounding students’ everyday lives and disregard the evidence that students’ home languages can be a resource for learning both content and language. More importantly, the analysis reveals increased tensions between the local and global ideologies by showing that the English language policy contradicts the Ministry of Education’s mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) policy, the latter of which aims to promote the use of local languages as the medium of instruction up to Grade 3.
Taking a critical approach that considers the role of power and resistance to power in teachers' affective lives, Sarah Benesch examines the relationship between English language teaching and emotions in postsecondary classrooms. The exploration takes into account implicit feeling rules that may drive institutional expectations of teacher performance and affect teachers' responses to and decisions about pedagogical matters. Based on interviews with postsecondary English language teachers, the book analyzes ways in which they negotiate tension - theorized as emotion labor - between feeling rules and teachers' professional training and/or experience in particularly challenging areas of teaching: high-stakes literacy testing; responding to student writing; plagiarism; and attendance. Discussion of this rich interview data offers an expanded and nuanced understanding of English language teaching, one positing teachers' emotion labor as a framework for theorizing emotions critically and as a tool of teacher agency and resistance.
Although a well-established domain of research in English language teaching, native-speaker ideologies have received little attention in French language education. This article reports on a study that examined the salience of "authentic French" in the identity construction of French as a second language (FSL) teachers in English-speaking Canada. Adopting a discursive-constructionist approach, the qualitative multiple case study analyzed FSL teachers' discursive representations of their experiences while on professional development in France. Findings point to FSL teachers' continuing orientation to a native-speaker ideal and its significant impact on their professional self-conceptions. The discussion focuses on how non-francophone teachers in particular negotiate a legitimate identity as FSL teachers through various discursive processes. Implications of the study foreground identity as a key factor in how teachers learn and practise their profession and remind us that non-native-speaker teachers must be given opportunities to develop alternative ideas about what it means to be a competent language teacher. ©2017 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes.
This article aims to broaden the scope of language teacher identity research by investigating the emotional demands on teachers-in-training and nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in particular. We examined how our focal NNEST participant, Puja, was confronted with and successfully negotiated numerous emotional challenges in her first year in a U.S. MATESOL program. Furthermore, we investigated the impact emotions had on her overall teacher identity development and how her growth as an educator was evident in her use of strategies. Following past research that viewed teacher emotions through a narrative lens (e.g., Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014; De Costa, 2015a), we created Puja's ‘story’ by analyzing data sources that included interviews, teaching observations, journal entries, and stimulated verbal and written reports. Our narrative construction focuses on the reflexive relationship between Puja's emotions and her subsequent identity development. While we acknowledge that emotional tensions are part of teachers’ identity development (and potentially more so for NNESTs), Puja largely navigated emotional challenges in a positive manner. The article concludes with a call for new pedagogical models that help teachers develop their reflexivity and negotiate potential emotion-related challenges they might encounter.
What constitutes a “good teacher” and “good teaching” has come under much scrutiny in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and increased demands for accountability. It is against this evolving landscape and the pathbreaking work of the Douglas Fir Group (DFG, 2016) that this special issue engages the following two broad questions: (a) In what ways is language teaching “identity work”? and (b) To what extent does a transdisciplinary approach to language learning and teaching offer insight into language teacher identity? We begin this Introduction with a discussion on identity research in second language acquisition and applied linguistics, and then address innovations in language teacher identity research, exploring how this work has been advanced methodologically through narratives, discourse analysis, and an ethical consideration of research practices. We then consider how the transdisciplinary framework of the DFG, and its focus on macro, meso, and micro dimensions of language learning at the ideological, institutional, and classroom levels, respectively, might contribute to our understanding of language teacher identity. In the final section, we argue that the host of complementary theories adopted by the six contributors supports the view that a transdisciplinary approach to language teacher identity is both productive and desirable. Further, the contributors advance the language teacher identity research agenda by taking into consideration (a) how teacher identity intersects with the multilingual (Higgins and Ponte) and translingual (Zheng) realities of contemporary classrooms, (b) the investment of teachers in developing the semiotic repertoires of learners (Stranger–Johannessen and Norton) and a socially inclusive learning environment (Barkhuizen), and (c) the emotions (Wolff and De Costa) and ethical practices (Miller, Morgan, and Medina) of teachers. Central to all articles in this special issue is the need to recognize the rich linguistic and personal histories that language teachers bring into the classroom in order to promote effective language learning.
The aim of this paper is to offer a critical discussion of the role of native and foreign accents in L2 pronunciation teaching. Several studies concluded that classroom practices of grammar instruction are strongly influenced by teaching cultures. We will examine whether this is also the case for pronunciation teaching. While the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) recognises accent as a pivotal aspect in language learning, textbooks rarely account for phonetic variation. Examples from French reveal the importance of both teaching cultures and (standard) language ideologies which directly affect the way accents are treated in L2 instruction. These findings highlight the urgency to reassess the construct of nativeness in pronunciation instruction and to adapt curriculum planning to meet the needs of L2 language teaching in complex multilingual and multicultural settings.
In the field of language learning psychology (LLP), research has tended to focus on the learner with comparatively little attention paid to understanding teacher psychology and what helps promote teachers’ professional well-being. In this paper, we begin by reviewing research which shows the central role played by teacher psychology, not only for themselves but also for their learners. We consider insights specific to the field of SLA and identify gaps in the knowledge base about teacher psychology, which we argue needs expanding and complexifying. Then, drawing on insights from positive psychology, we discuss approaches which can help to esteem, protect and support language teachers working in this rewarding but demanding profession. The paper concludes by calling for more teacher-centredness in LLP research and suggests a role for positive psychology in promoting the professional well-being of language teachers in a range of settings.
An area of research that may shed light on the pressing problem of FL teacher attrition is emotion labor. Emotion labor (or emotional labour), a construct stemming from research in the fields of communication and psychology and focusing mainly on service professionals, has recently been taken up in education literature. Although student emotions in language acquisition have been examined, the field of applied linguistics has not yet tapped the explanatory potential of teacher emotions. The current project explores the emotion work of 5 teachers in rural U.S. high school FL classrooms. Thematic analysis of interviews with teachers of Spanish, French, and Latin yielded 5 key insights: perceived lack of community and institutional support for FL teachers, an excessive burden for motivation felt by these teachers, the use of teacher emotion labor to motivate their students, emotional burnout of the teachers, and perceived lack of teacher efficacy. The last two, while not inevitable, seem to be mutually influencing, forming a downward spiral that can eventually impact the willingness or ability of some teachers to continue in their careers. Implications of this study include recognition of the significance of teacher emotion labor in FL pedagogy and its potential role in teacher attrition.