An Ecological Examination of Teacher Emotions in the Tertiary EEL Context

【“教师发展论坛”第（ 03 ）期】

主讲人：外国语学院 王婧

东南大学外国语学院博士生导师 韩亚文

时  间：2022年3月3日（星期四）13：30

地  点：澳门人威尼斯3966方山校区崇一楼文北308

腾讯会议号：252 280 955

主  办：外国语学院

  Abstract:

Based on the ecological system framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), this research adopted a mixed method to explore the teacher emotions in the tertiary EFL context. The aim is to better understand how the emotions of these teachers are influenced by factors of different levels (micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro- levels) of their ecology. A corpus of 109 university English teachers participated in an online questionnaire followed by semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers. Analysis of the survey data revealed that love was the most frequently experienced emotion, while fear was the least experienced emotion. The results also showed that multiple levels of contextual factors that influenced five types of discrete teacher emotions (love, joy, sadness, anger, and fear) were language teaching reform (macro-level), university accountability system (exo-level), work-life balance (meso-level), and interaction with students, colleagues, leaders, and family (micro-level). These factors were well supported and supplemented by the qualitative data from the follow-up interviews. It was also found that the balance between work and family was especially important in the context of Chinese culture. Moreover, teacher emotions were related to teacher agency. The findings provide a better understanding of improving language teacher emotions in Chinese universities.