Guest Lecture: Language teacher wellbeing across the career trajectory: Challenges and resources

In this presentation, I would like to elicit the challenges language teachers face and the resources they draw on to manage and nurture their wellbeing during different phases of their careers. Reporting on a large-scale three-year international study, this presentation will focus on reflecting on the practical implications of the findings for teachers, teacher educators, and policymakers.

More detailed summary:
Language teaching is an exceptionally stressful profession with educators experiencing a complex blend of challenges and positive uplifts during the course of their careers (Gregersen et al., 2020). To date, research has mostly focused on language teachers’ stressors (MacIntyre et al., 2019); however, there is a commensurate need to also understand factors that support language teacher wellbeing and the resources they can draw on to flourish in their profession.
This presentation reports on a three-year project at the ELT Research and Methodology Department at the University of Graz funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) to gain insights into the challenges language teachers face at different points of their careers and the strengths they can draw on to face these difficulties. Data was generated from interviews with 58 language teachers in the UK and Austria and the analysis looked specifically at the concerns facing educators during four specific career phases (Day & Gu, 2010): Pre-service, early-career, mid-career, and late-career. The focus in this talk is on discussing the practical implications of the findings which offer valuable insights into the specific personal and contextual factors that can threaten teachers’ wellbeing and also strengthen it during their career phases. Furthermore, the purpose is to provide evidence-based strategies for personal and contextual actions to support language teachers in their professional roles throughout their careers.