“Let’s accept it”: Vietnamese university language teachers’ emotion in online synchronous teaching in response to COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Objective

Teaching is often described as one of the most emotional-laden professions, and teachers experience a wide range of emotions while teaching. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis of conversion to online teaching has triggered new emotional experiences of teachers that not many studies have taken into account.

Method

Studying emotion from a post-structuralist lens, this study examines the emotional orientations of Vietnamese higher education language teachers and their emotional responses in online teaching environments.

Results

The findings show that the pedagogically and technologically distinctive features of online teaching aroused unique challenges and emotions of teachers, both positive and negative. Also, the teachers reported a number of strategies to cope with the new situation.

Conclusion

The study highlights the critical need for acknowledgement and support of institutions for the transition to online teaching in the “new normal situation”.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Teachers’ emotional experiences are known to have profound influences on educational quality and well-being of both teachers and students.

2. Being a foreign language teacher triggers its own unique emotional characters that come from different factors.

3. The COVID-19 crisis has sparked a massive challenge for the global education community.

What this topic adds:

1. The sudden conversion to online teaching mode has posed significant challenges to teachers in terms of the readiness and adaptation to the new pedagogical and technological requirements in an online environment

2. Vietnamese English language teachers experienced a full spectrum of emotions, both positive and negative when teaching online synchronous classes.

3. The tensions and challenges when shifting to online teaching need to be acknowledged, and the intervention strategies should be prompt and synchronous with the change process.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• online teaching
• higher education
• COVID-19
• Vietnam

Acknowledgement

We would also like to thank the participants and two anonymous reviewers for the contributions to the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16943836.v1

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.