Exploring Pre-Service Language Teachers’ Well-Being Trajectories: A Classroom-Based Study

Arkadiusz Pietluch, dr Magdalena Trinder, dr Marta Dick-Bursztyn

Summary

Research consistently shows that teachers who flourish are far more effective in their teaching, highlighting the critical importance of satisfactory well-being for learners’ educational outcomes. While the well-being of active educators has been the focal point of numerous investigations, the well-being of pre-service language teachers remains relatively underexplored. Similarly, the dynamicity inherent in the construct has received scant attention thus far. By integrating a complex dynamic view of well-being with an ecological approach, this classroom-based study seeks to examine the micro-scale changes in the well-being of four prospective language teachers in Poland and to elaborate on the factors underlying these shifts. The participants’ well-being trajectories were tracked over a six-week period during lectures and microteaching sessions. The data were also drawn from weekly in-depth interviews and were further subjected to inductive thematic analysis. The findings provide further evidence for the dynamic nature of pre-service language teachers’ well-being, as the respondents’ trajectories exhibited significant variability both during and in between individual sessions. The participants’ well-being fluctuated in response to various personal, social, and contextual influences, including efficacy beliefs, a lack of technological literacy, classroom climate, training programme specifications and requirements, low professional awareness, and the lecturer’s instructional choices.

Biodata

Arkadiusz Pietluch holds a PhD in linguistics and is an assistant professor at the University of Rzeszów (Poland), where he currently teaches didactics, ELT methodology, and practical English. His areas of academic interest include the psychology of language learning and teaching, English language teacher education, motivation, the integration of AI tools in teacher training, and positive language education. Magdalena Trinder, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Rzeszów, specialising in linguistics and education. She earned her PhD in 2016, focusing on personality traits and gender in second language acquisition. Her research includes foreign language education, educational psychology, and socio-economic influences on educational achievement. Dr Trinder teaches practical English, ELT methodology, and continuously mentors young researchers. Marta Dick-Bursztyn, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Rzeszów (Poland), where she teaches didactics, ELT methodology, and practical English. Her interdisciplinary research encompasses various aspects of linguistics, didactics, psychology, and pedagogy. She has organised several academic conferences and events, and frequently collaborates with her students to organise thematic workshops for primary school students and teachers.

Presentation Details

Type of presentation: Talk
The presentation is for: Experienced audience
The presentation focuses on: Adult
The session is: A balanced mixture of theory and practice
Category: Teacher Training and Development, including Teacher’s Self-Care and Resilience
Presentation is commercial: No
Speaking on behalf of a publisher, examination board, or commercial organisation? Yes, No

Scheduled for

Date: Saturday, 2024-09-21, 13:20 - 14:00
Place: NE 204