Pronunciation Teacher Wellbeing: Evidence From a 10‐Year Study

Abstract Teachers are often anxious, lacking confidence, skills, and knowledge about how to address their students' pronunciation issues in the classroom. Given these challenges, there is a need for research to examine the relationship between pronunciation teachers' wellbeing (e.g., anxiety, confidence) and their practices and cognitions (beliefs, knowledge). Theoretically underpinned by language teacher cognition (Borg, 2006) and Seligman's (2011) PERMA framework, comprising Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment, this paper explores the wellbeing of three teachers in conjunction with their pronunciation‐oriented practices and cognitions based on profiles constructed over a 10‐year period. These teacher profiles were derived from qualitative data collected in six phases over the decade‐long research project: pre‐ and post‐graduate course questionnaires, a course assignment, classroom observations, focus groups (phase 1), narrative frames (phase 2), and four rounds of semi‐structured interviews (phases 3–6). Findings demonstrate that wellbeing not only plays an important role in the teachers' 10‐year trajectories, but that it is intertwined with their practices, cognitions, identities, and contexts. Based on these findings, the paper concludes with an expansion of our previously established conceptual model of pronunciation teaching by including a new element: wellbeing.