Do teachers’ well-being and resilience predict their Foreign Language Teaching Enjoyment (FLTE)?

Abstract

Abstract This study was one (partial) replication of the first study focusing on FL teacher enjoyment with the Foreign Language Teaching Enjoyment (FLTE) Scale. The influence of well-being, resilience, and some selected socio-biographical variables on FLTE was examined with a more refined data analysis approach based on hierarchical regression (i.e., offering a range of effect sizes for each predictor). Results showed that resilience (ΔR 2 = 11.7 %–38.9 %) and well-being (ΔR 2 = 3.6 %–30.9 %) were important factors statistically significantly predicting FLTE for Chinese EFL teachers, whereas length of teaching experience (ΔR 2 = 0.1 %–2.2 %) was not regarded as an important predictor and gender (ΔR 2 = 0.02 %–0.13 %) was deemed unimportant. This replication study has (1) confirmed that well-being and resilience predict FLTE, (2) reaffirmed the value of the above-mentioned more refined approach, and (3) underscored the benefit for including at least one socio-biographical variable together with the researchers’ focal factors as predictors in hierarchical regression, which will provide useful reference for the relative importance of each predictor. Some practical implications are also discussed.