EMOTIONAL LABOR STRATEGIES IN ONLINE EFL TEACHING: A NOVICE EFL TEACHER’S NARRATIVE

This study explores the emotional labor strategies of novice EFL teachers when teaching online to young learners. Drawing on a post-structural perspective, the research focuses on how novice EFL teachers construct the emotional rules they are expected to follow and how they perform emotional labor regarding those rules. Two main tools were used in this study, including a narrative frame and a semi-structured in-depth interview. The participant was a novice teacher with two years of experience, currently working as an EFL teacher at a private language center and also teaching primary students online as a freelancer. The findings show that the emotional labor strategies of this novice teacher in online teaching are influenced not only by his institution’s display rules but also by how he sees himself as a teacher. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of novice teachers’ emotional labor by highlighting the role of context, negotiation, and identity construction.