“They Are our Future”: Professional Pride in Language Teachers across the Globe

Abstract

While the emotion of pride has received increasing attention in general psychology, it has gone largely overlooked in the field of education generally, and language education specifically. This study explores the sources of pride reported by 140 English language teachers from various contexts across the globe. Data were generated through an online survey using a series of open-ended items addressing various dimensions of participants' professional pride. The results revealed two main orientations in terms of the sources of professional pride experienced by participants, namely, self- and other-oriented. Furthermore, data showed that participants in this study reported only on authentic pride as opposed to hubristic pride. The data indicated how these teachers' sense of pride is socially determined and interconnected with key psychological constructs such as motivation, self-esteem, sense of meaning, agency, and well-being. The concluding section of the paper considers how pride can be conceptualized in the domain of language education, how it can potentially be leveraged to boost teacher well-being, and what pathways this study opens up for further research.