ABSTRACT
With the shift from negative to positive psychology in the field of language learning and teaching psychology, and in view of the fact that effective teaching pivots on teachers’ capacity for emotional connectedness, researchers have recently mainly focused on the role of positive emotions, and enjoyment in particular, in the process of foreign language education. Inspired by Henry and Thorsen, taking into consideration the “relationality” of teacher-student relationships and self-disclosure (SD) as a relational practice, we explored the influence of teachers’ relational identity work (e.g., the specific situated roles that a teacher adopts in a communicative setting with respect to other learners), based on Tracy and Robles’ framework of identity, on learners’ emergent patterns of enjoyment within the ecology of a foreign language classroom. This ecology refers to the interaction between the language learners and their classroom environment. A triangulation of data including narrative frames, interviews and field notes of observations in a series of English as a foreign language classes was collected. The findings indicate that teachers’ SD can provide deeper micro-ecological insights into, and relationally grounded perspectives on, the emergence of patterns of foreign language enjoyment in the classroom. Alongside the representational aspects of self such as master identity and personal identity and relational identities made visible by teachers’ SD as an act of identity work during moment-to-moment, situated interactions between teachers and learners deeply influence learners’ enjoyment. Explanations of the findings as well as pedagogical implications are discussed.
