Modelling the interplay between resilience, emotion regulation and psychological well-being among Chinese English language teachers: The mediating role of self-efficacy beliefs

Abstract

With the rise of positive psychology (PP) in 1954 and its flowering in the last decade of the 20th century, the focus of psychological and educational studies has shifted from examining negative health-related outcomes to their positive counterparts. In line with this new research agenda, several L2 researchers have studied different positive health-related outcomes and their predictors among language teachers. Few language studies, however, have been dedicated to examining language teachers' psychological well-being and its potential predictors. To bridge the lacuna, the current research tried to evaluate the role of emotion regulation and resilience in predicting Chinese EFL teachers' psychological well-being. This research also strived to find out whether perceived self-efficacy could mediate the interaction between psychological well-being, emotion regulation and resilience. For this purpose, 430 English teachers recruited from Chinese EFL classes were asked to respond to four closed-ended questionnaires. The analysis outcomes exhibited strong and positive associations between resilience, emotion regulation and psychological well-being. The results also divulged that the psychological well-being of English language teachers could be meaningfully predicted by their emotion regulation ability and resilience. Additionally, the results indicated that the association between Chinese English teachers' resilience, emotion regulation ability and psychological well-being could be significantly mediated by their self-efficacy beliefs. These outcomes may have some useful and instructive implications for educational principals and teacher trainers.