English Teachers’ Well-Being from the PERMA Perspective: A Retrodictive Qualitative Modelling Approach

Language teachers face a range of stressors (MacIntyre et al., 2019) and challenges because of the physical, emotional, and socially demanding habits of their work, negatively affecting their well-being and thus performance. Therefore, it is quite significant to comprehensively address the well-being of language teachers in the educational setting because it is a known fact from the literature that teachers’ well-being may significantly affect both their level of enjoyment and their capacity to instruct students efficiently (Gregersen et al., 2020). In 2011, Seligman proposed the PERMA framework, which is described as psychological well-being and happiness and includes subscales such as positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, to understand how one can flourish in life. In this regard, the present study aims to investigate the well-being of two English language instructors from Türkiye throughout their careers from the perspective of PERMA. The data were obtained through in-depth semi-structured interviews with a retrodictive qualitative modelling (RQM) approach, which was analysed according to the principles of Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006). Data were analysed separately for both participants and then comparisons were made between the two language instructors. The analysis revealed some factors that play a role in the well-being of the two language instructors. The dominant theme that emerged was perseverance, a key factor in the well-being of the two participants. Other joint factors included professional development, responsibilities, social interaction, and student improvement. The results of the study showed some important factors that can affect the well-being of language teachers. Regarding this, the paper ends with implications and suggestions for future research.