Abstract
Based on an in-depth semi-structured interview method, this study explored sources of nonnative university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ professional anxiety and relevant emotion regulation strategies in a Chinese context. Participants mostly suffered from academic promotion anxiety, followed by research anxiety, teaching anxiety, and anxiety about English language proficiency and knowledge. To overcome this negative emotion, participants adopted two families of emotion modifications: response-focused regulation strategies including coping, expressive suppression, and communication, as well as antecedent-focused regulation strategies comprising cognitive reappraisal and distraction, with the former outweighing the latter. Findings revealed the complexity of nonnative university EFL teachers’ professional anxiety and cultural differences in emotion regulation strategies.
Highlights
As an emotional practice (Hargreaves, 1998, 2001), teaching is imbued with emotional interaction between learners and teachers (Dewaele et al, 2018)
The new requirement for academic promotion at my university is too demanding to meet. It seems that I am in a dilemma where on the one hand, the application for promotion to associate professor requires papers and research work; on the other hand, many journals have unwritten rules for authors’ professional title, and many research projects only offer opportunities to candidates who are at least associate professors
Whenever I think about that I would retire as a lecturer rather than an associate professor or a professor, I cannot sleep, and I doubt my qualification for being an English teacher. (T6)
Summary
As an emotional practice (Hargreaves, 1998, 2001), teaching is imbued with emotional interaction between learners and teachers (Dewaele et al, 2018). Emotional research in the educational domain has mostly been developed from the perspective of learners (Arnold, 1999), leaving teacher emotions largely neglected (Dewaele et al, 2018; Mercer & Kostoulas, 2018). It was not until the mid-1970s that teachers were considered to have mental lives (Freeman, 2002). Very little is known about nonnative EFL teachers’ emotions (Braine, 2010); their anxiety (Tum, 2012) and how they use relevant emotion regulation strategies to regulate anxiety in professional development
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