English Language Teaching Reform in Vietnam from the Perspective of Teacher Educators’ Emotions

Language teacher educators (LTEs) are a core group of stakeholders who greatly influence the development of future language teachers and, by extension, their future learners. In this exploratory study, we sought to investigate the emotional experiences of five English LTEs from Austria with the help of semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed inductively, in multiple stages, and revealed how the LTEs’ emotions were influenced by the interplay between their personal psychologies and the socio-cultural contexts in which they lived and worked. These findings support an integrative theoretical perspective on LTE emotions interconnecting the social and psychological facets of emotions. The analysis also showed how the LTEs’ emotions varied in valence depending on the context with a notable difference between their emotions in the classroom compared to their emotions in respect to their workplace more generally. As such, the findings raise fascinating questions about the saliency and weighting of emotions across contexts even within one job.