Heartfelt pedagogy across borders: Emotional experiences of language teachers in multilingual educational contexts with insights from Malta

Teachers’ emotional well-being is increasingly recognised as essential for effective teaching and sustainable retention across diverse educational systems. This mixed-methods study explores the emotional experiences of 50 Maltese teachers in middle and secondary schools, using the Teacher Emotions Questionnaire and interviews. The findings show that while positive emotions, including joy, pride, and love, enhance teacher-student relationships and professional fulfilment, negative emotions, including anger, fatigue, and hopelessness, intensify with teaching experience and are linked to student misbehaviour, linguistic challenges, limited parental engagement, and insufficient institutional support. These patterns mirror international trends in multilingual and multicultural settings, where language teachers face heightened emotional demands. The participants emphasised the need for emotional intelligence training and systemic support structures beyond individual coping. By situating the Maltese context within broader global discourse, this study offers new empirical insights into teacher emotionality and underscores the importance of sustained, policy-level interventions to enhance resilience in diverse classrooms. • Maltese language teachers experience both joy and emotional fatigue in diverse classrooms. • Emotional strain intensifies with years of teaching experience. • Student motivation and behaviour significantly impact teachers' emotional well-being. • Institutional and peer support is key to emotional resilience in multilingual settings. • Policy-level emotional support is essential for sustainable teacher retention.