Teacher Well‐Being Across Educational Contexts in Türkiye: A Narrative‐Ecological Analysis of Workload, Accountability, and Recognition


Özmen K. S., Dilber E.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, sa.45, ss.1-21, 2026 (AHCI, SSCI, Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Basım Tarihi: 2026
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1111/ijal.70399
  • Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: EBSCO Communication Source, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Communication Source (EBSCO), Education Source Ultimate (EBSCO), Scopus, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Educational research abstracts (ERA), INSPEC, EBSCO Education Source, Linguistic Bibliography, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, MLA International Bibliography
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-21
  • Gazi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

ABSTRACT This narrative inquiry examines English teacher well‐being across three institutional contexts in Türkiye: private K‐12 schooling, state vocational education, and a university language unit. Drawing on life‐story conversations, follow‐up elicitation interviews, and participant‐selected anonymized artifacts, it explores well‐being in relation to workload, recognition, professional identity, and institutional expectations. Three teachers were purposefully selected to maximize ecological contrast. Barkhuizen's positioning analysis was integrated with Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to examine how institutional demands enter teachers’ accounts of self, duty, voice, and professional possibility. Findings show that well‐being was shaped by individual resilience and by how institutions organized work, evaluated performance, and distributed recognition. Case patterns involved branding and visibility labor, care‐based moral strain, and non‐recognition of pedagogical labor. Across cases, teachers used selective compliance, quiet refusals, and context‐sensitive pedagogical workarounds to preserve professional values under misaligned institutional conditions. The study contributes a narrative‐ecological lens for tracing well‐being across nested educational ecologies.