Language teachers’ capitals as resources for wellbeing across the career trajectories

Abstract

Over their career trajectories, teachers experience diverse challenges and uplifts, which influence their sense of wellbeing. While research on teacher career phases provides important insights into their lives, studies exploring teacher wellbeing and capitals they draw on to cope are scarce; and, in the field of language education, virtually non-existent. In this article, we explore the capitals of 58 language teachers from Austria and the UK in pre-service, early-, mid-, and late-career phases. Data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews and were analysed utilising a combination of inductive and deductive data analyses. The findings revealed four interrelated capitals which supported these teachers’ wellbeing: Psychological, social, human, and health capitals. This study offers key insights into wellbeing through the lens of capitals with clear implications for policy-makers, teacher educators, and other relevant stakeholders to understand how to support language teachers in their professional roles.