%0 Journal Article
%T Caring and emotional labour: Language teachers¡¯ engagement with anxious learners in private language school classrooms
%A Christina Gkonou
%A Elizabeth R. Miller
%J Language Teaching Research
%@ 1477-0954
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1362168817728739
%X This study examines how a group of eight teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Greece discuss their efforts to address their students¡¯ language anxiety (LA). We found that in most cases, these teachers¡¯ efforts are motivated by an ethic of care (Noddings, 1988, 2005, 2013) in which they seek to construct positive relationships with students in order to help mitigate their students¡¯ LA. Though desirable, such efforts often result in ¡®emotional labour¡¯ as teachers suppress their own negative emotions while attending to those of their students. Adopting a dialogical perspective to teacher engagement with anxious learners, we analyse the affective or emotional labour that language teachers often undertake in responding to their students¡¯ displays of LA. Drawing on positioning theory, we explore these concepts through analysing these language teachers¡¯ interview accounts, produced in response to questions related to their students¡¯ LA
%K caring
%K emotional labour
%K language anxiety
%K language teacher
%K teacher agency
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362168817728739