L2 teachers’ professional burnout and emotional stress: Facing frustration and demotivation toward one’s profession in a Japanese EFL context

Abstract

Until quite recently, teaching and learning have been regarded as cognitive activities in which teachers merely transmit knowledge to students in a unidirectional manner, causing emotional aspects to be undervalued. The 2013 OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey revealed that teachers in Japan work the longest hours (53.9 h per week; 10.8 h daily during weekdays) among 34 participating regions and countries. It was also found that they lacked self-esteem and self-confidence and that they believed their profession to be not valued in society. The Ministry of Education in Japan recently started releasing a report on the problems affecting the mental well-being of teachers to draw attention to their critical work conditions. The teachers’ low self-esteem and self-confidence can be attributed not only to their work conditions but also to a lack of understanding about their emotionality by policymakers and school administrators. This chapter reports on qualitative research that the author conducted in a Japanese EFL context to investigate English teachers’ emotions as they relate to context-specific socioeducational and sociopolitical factors. The research revealed that top-down imposed foreign language education policies weakened the teachers’ sense of individual and collective self-efficacy and that their emotional well-being was at stake.