"What makes teachers flourish? Positivity as a key to Personal Contentment in Language Teaching"
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: What makes teachers flourish? Positivity as a Key to Personal Contentment in Language TeachingAlthough teaching is a challenging and emotionally exhausting profession, it is also considered a creative, enriching and meaningful profession where teachers play a crucial role in the lives of children and young adults.Teachers are confronted with influences from their professional surroundings such as students, parents, colleagues, head teachers and "the system" as a whole.This study investigates the factors contributing to the professional wellbeing of EFL secondary school teachers in Austria and the self-regulatory strategies they use in order to achieve flourishing (Seligman, 2011).Eight semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with Austrian EFL teachers at different stages of their professional careers, ranging from teachers in their first five years of teaching to teachers with over 35 years of teaching experience.The data were coded and analysed with the help of the qualitative analysis software MAXQDA from a grounded theory perspective.The results revealed that there are many negative influences on teachers which they counter with positive, conscious and active strategies in order to achieve personal contentment at the workplace, and in further consequence, flourishing.The study shows that there are various factors on the contextual, personal and interpersonal level that influence wellbeing.
Author: Schöttl, Tanja
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7034813242