Teacher immunity, technological pedagogical content knowledge, and teacher engagement: contributing factors and relations

Abstract

The term 'language teacher immunity' has been coined as a novel concept in language teacher psychology. Since no teacher has ever been innately protected from unpredictable and uncontrollable disturbances, their innate immunity should be boosted. To this end, the current study by using a mixed-method approach attempted to examine the roles of two potential influencing variables that might strengthen teacher immunity, i.e., technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and teacher engagement. For the quantitative part of the study, three questionnaires were sent to 120 English teachers to examine the probable predictors. The findings of the quantitative data declared that teacher engagement is highly related to teacher immunity and could serve as a significant predictor for teacher immunity, while TPACK is not associated with teacher immunity nor perform as a predictor. In the next phase of the study and on the basis of explanatory sequential mixed-method design, followup semi-structured interviews with 10 English teachers were conducted in order to identify the contributing factors to teacher immunity that might be identified during the project. According to the content analysis of the interviews, it was revealed that teacher immunity is more associated with affective factors, teachers' engagement, teachers' autonomy, and teachers' experiences rather than teachers' theoretical pedagogical content knowledge. Additional results and the implications for educational policymakers and teacher educators are also presented together with suggestions for further research.

Chinese English as a Foreign Language Teachers’ Immunity and Mindfulness as Predictors of Their Work Engagement

“…Debate on providing access to highly engaged teachers is of critical importance in the recent educational context and research ( Staiger and Rockoff, 2010 ; Pianta et al, 2012 ). A body of research has tried to study the effectiveness of various factors on teachers’ work engagement including content knowledge, technological pedagogical content knowledge ( Han et al, 2020 ; Özgür, 2020 ; Bao et al, 2021 ; Beyranvand and Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021 ), teacher-efficacy and teacher autonomy ( Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2014 ), emotion regulation and resilience ( Xie, 2021 ), and teacher intrinsic motivation ( Bal and Bakker, 2010 ). To pursue this line of inquiry, the present study aims to examine the role of teacher immunity and mindfulness in predicting English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ work engagement in the Chinese context.…”

“…Since nobody is innately immune, teachers also are not inherently protected against unexpected and disturbing factors. Therefore, considering the importance of their profession, their immunity should be enhanced ( Beyranvand and Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021 ). Training and equipping teachers with a crucial understanding of different emotional factors of the education context and emotion-regulation strategies can help them to succeed in their profession and consequently support and promote learners’ success ( Bielak and Mystkowsks-Wiertelak, 2020 ; Derakhshan et al, 2021a ).…”

Adaptation of Teacher Immunity Scale to Turkish: Validity and Reliability Study

“…Given the peculiarities of the new century, teachers work in very stressful environments, and they have to cope with numerous problems. Pressures from educational authorities, parents, school managers, or other stakeholders can undermine teachers' immunity which should be fostered (Beyranvand & Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021). Teachers are not innately immune to this stressful environment, and they need to employ some psychological mechanisms to deal with the everchanging problems of the profession.…”

“…Though a recent concept in teacher psychology research, a considerable amount of research has accumulated on teacher immunity (Ahmadi et al, 2020;Atefi Boroujeni et al, 2021;Beyranvand & Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021;Gooran et al, 2022;Jafari & Ameri, 2020;Li, 2021;Sampson, 2022). However, teacher immunity is under-researched in the Turkish context (Saydam, 2019), and the limited studies (Ordem, 2017;Sarıçoban & Kırmızı, 2021) address only English language teachers because Hiver's (2017) scale is not available in Turkish.…”

Teaching Immunity of Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach

“…Self-organization is seen as a powerful general process by Hiver (2017). In addition, it is argued that the process of self-organization is through an ensemble of complex systems; and flexibility, autonomy and solidity are various aspects of this process (Beyranvand & Zenouzagh, 2021). At the same time, the researchers emphasize that these systems can operate and organize themselves to deal with a variety of anxieties (internal and external), mental uneasiness, and conflicts.…”