The rising insecurity of language teaching jobs in higher education and its effects on research

Abstract

Higher education institutions are increasingly reliant on part-time faculty without job security. While this practice offers economic flexibility to institutions by enabling them to hire contingent or adjunct faculty at lower rates, research has found a knock-on effect on teaching quality, employee motivation, and career advancement. In this article, we use data from a large survey of Spanish language teaching professionals, most of whom work in higher education, to analyse how job instability impacts the engagement of those professionals in and with research. We focus on this aspect because research engagement is vital for the advancement of the field and for individual professional development, and, if neglected, it can marginalise language teaching professionals in the long term. Our findings highlight local and global trends toward ‘adjunctification’, or the growing tendency of language teaching faculty roles to be unstable and insecure. We identify key factors linked to adjunctification, such as migrant status, and analyse teaching professionals’ views about the future of the profession. Based on these findings, we propose two actionable steps: (1) establishing international and sustainable professional pathways for language teaching professionals and (2) redefining the language teaching profession to prioritise research as a core competency among language teaching professionals.