Secret doors, coffee cups and humour: Investigating EAP teachers’ positive emotions, well-being and quality of life through ‘sticky objects’

This paper presents findings from a British Council funded research project investigating teacher understandings and lived practices in relation to positive emotion, well-being, and quality of life in two contrasting English for Academic Purposes contexts (UK and Saudi Arabia). Emotion is an area of growing interest in language teaching and learning research (Prior 2019), with teacher emotion a key area of investigation. A related recent rise in interest in the benefits of positive psychology (MacIntyre et al 2016) indicates another essential aspect of emotion requiring attention: teacher well-being (Mercer and Kostoulas 2018). Exploratory Practice (Allwright and Hanks 2009; Hanks 2017) conceptualises well-being as quality of classroom language learning life (Gieve and Miller 2006) and as a way of avoiding burn-out (Allwright & Miller 2013; Hanks 2019). Teacher reflections (Farrell 2007) on their own emotional responses affords an opportunity to actively interrogate the mundane and the extraordinary in EAP practice in this respect. This project used ‘sticky objects’ (Ahmed 2004; Benesch 2012) as a heuristic to explore teachers’ understandings of and practices of their positive emotions. ‘Sticky objects’ are conceived as classroom artifacts to which emotions stick and which in turn provoke further emotional responses. Analysis of teachers’ multi-modal diary entries of ‘sticky objects’ from their daily teaching experience together with follow-up interview data provides insights into the range of stimuli for teachers’ positive emotions and the power and duration of these. The paper will discuss contrasting findings from the two different contexts and consider implications for teacher education, CPD and individual practitioner reflective practice.