Teacher Resilience-Building Practices Among Early Career EFL Teachers in South Korea

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Resilience and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Teaching and Learning Practices in a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Early career English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers are highly susceptible to stress and burnout and often require high levels of support during their earliest teaching years to cultivate greater teacher resilience. Through a two-year ethnographic case study of three first-time EFL teachers in South Korea, this paper asks: In what ways, and to what extent, do early career EFL teachers engage in resilience-building practices through their participation in professional learning communities? Findings suggest that teachers’ resilience-building practices varied depending on the type of social interaction, with the teachers demonstrating greater vulnerability and risk-taking when in conversation with their peers through professional learning communities, suggesting that social networks and social interaction among early career teachers support challenging resilience-building practices.

Author

• Laura M Kennedy, Northern Michigan University