Introduction to Language Teacher Psychology

Sarah Mercer and Achilleas Kostoulas

There is no system in the world or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools.

Ken Robinson, 2013

Why a Book on Language Teacher Psychology?

If you think back to your language learning at school, you might remember specific tasks or projects you did, but, even more likely, you will remember your teachers. You will remember the kind of people they were, the atmosphere they created in their classrooms and how you felt in their class and in your relationship with them. Teachers are absolutely defining in terms of a person's educational experience as well as often in terms of their life trajectories after school. Surely these people, who have the privilege and considerable responsibility of crafting learning experiences, are so important that understanding their characteristics, personalities, needs, motivations and well-being should be a priority. And yet, in second language acquisition (SLA) to date, this has not been the case.

Understandably and quite rightly, the learner-centred movement drew attention to individual learners. It raised awareness among educators and researchers of the ways in which learners can vary as individuals and how these differences can impact on how they acquire additional languages. This movement was necessary in light of the dominant focus at the time on the language itself and the technical methods for teaching language to learners, with little or no consideration of their personal characteristics. However, in the field's eagerness to move pedagogically and empirically away from teacher-centred approaches, it has perhaps inadvertently led to a neglect of attention being paid to teachers as a population and as individuals. While the field of individual differences in SLA blossomed in respect of learner characteristics such as motivation, sense of self, beliefs, styles and strategies, attention to the teacher and teacher individual differences all but vanished. Around the 1990s this began to change as researchers started to examine teacher identities and teacher cognition, marking a gradual introduction of a body of work focusing on teachers as individuals, yet still comparatively limited in scope when compared to the body of work which examines learners.

More recently, the field of learner individual differences (ID) research in SLA has also undergone something of a transformation. First, the field has expanded its empirical focus to include research on constructs such as emotions (Dewaele, 2015; MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012), attributions (Williams et al., 2001), mindsets (Mercer & Ryan, 2010; Ryan & Mercer, 2012), goals (Woodrow, 2012), personality (Dewaele, 2012; Oxford, 1996) and others (Dornyei, 2009; Ehrman et al., 2003; Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2014). In a parallel development, there has also been a broadening of methodological approaches used to investigate learner diversity, incorporating qualitative and mixed method designs in addition to the more typical quantitative studies which dominated early work in the field (Tatzl et al., 2016). As the field has broadened, there has also been a notable trend towards increased interest in more holistic approaches, which examine interconnections between constructs and also the situated nature of constructs, and these new perspectives have often been influenced by complexity theories (Dörnyei, 2009; Dornyei & Ryan, 2015). Most recently, the field of ID research has grown to such an extent in content, scope and diversity of approaches that there is increasingly recognition of a community of research that falls under the umbrella of 'psychology of language learning and teaching', as evinced by the series in which this collection is situated. This new emerging field of scholarship extends beyond the traditional ID paradigm and, as such, creates the perfect conditions for broadening the agenda of those working in this area to include teachers, as is our intention with this collection.

There are several reasons why we feel it is especially important to study the psychology of language teachers. One important reason for studying the psychology of teachers is a need to redress the imbalance between studies that have focused on learners and those that have focused on teachers. When compared with the diversity, depth and breadth of research available on learner psychology, there is a notable scarcity of comparable studies examining a wide range of psychological constructs in teachers, teachers at all career stages and from multiple theoretical perspectives. Yet, if we can better understand teacher psychology, we can more easily appreciate the kind of support language teachers need to ensure that they flourish in their professional roles and are able to be the best teachers they can possibly be – for the sake of their own professional well-being as well as for their learners' well-being and ultimate learning. Indeed, understanding teacher psychology is a worthy goal...