Exploring Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor: a critical perspective

Abstract

Despite the growth of research on English for specific purposes (ESP) teachers over the past two decades, the scope of research that focally examines ESP teachers’ emotions is limited. The present study explored 10 Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor. Collecting data from questionnaires, narrative frames, and semi-structured interviews, we show how contextual discourses, policies, and expectations of ESP instruction interact with the teacher participants across four areas of pedagogy, assessment, materials, and curriculum and culture. Our findings indicated that content featured as a significant factor in the teachers’ emotions, agency, and identity directly, indirectly, and specifically through content-related discourses and participants. More specifically, it is not necessarily the content itself that along with language shape ESP teachers’ professional sense-making; rather, the way content manifolds in institutional work and interacts with language through various contextualities, modalities, and participants functions more profoundly in ESP teachers’ work. We provide implications for ESP teachers to draw on their collegial potentials to form communities of practice that positively contribute to their professional growth and transform their negative emotions into mutual emotionality.

Introduction

Over the past two decades, the scope of research on English for specific purposes (ESP) has exponentially grown. A central theme of research across many educational contexts has been the role ESP teachers play in students’ socio-educational growth (Campion, 2016; Ding, 2019). Along these lines, ESP teachers’ job descriptions have been considered as a focal theme of attention in how policy and planning, institutional particularities, sociocultural definitions, and pedagogical localities come to shape their work (Basturkmen, 2014; Kaivanpanah et al., 2021). This line of research generally highlights that the contextual parameters of ESP instruction are functional in ESP teachers’ instructional effectiveness (e.g., Atai & Tahekhani, 2018; Soodmand Afshar & Movassagh, 2016), institutional performance (e.g., Gu & Benson, 2015; Nazari & Karimpour, 2024; Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018), identity construction (Atai et al., 2018; Tao & Gao, 2018), and professionalism as ESP professionals (Basturkmen, 2014; Basturkmen & Bocanegra-Valle, 2018; Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998).

Considering that ESP teachers’ professional career demands various professional competencies and is closely linked to the contextualities defining their work (see the discussion on ESP teacher roles by Dudley-Evans & St John, (1998), Basturkmen (2014), their work is dynamically informed by the range of contextual discourses, expectations, and policies (Campion, 2016; Tao & Gao, 2018). In addition, fctors such as abundant classes, lack of appropriate materials, lack of recognition, low acknowledgement of teacher voice, economic inadequacy, and top-down evaluation are some of the problems that many ESP teachers experience in the Iranian context (see Derakhshan et al., 2023, 2024; Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018; Soodmand Afshar & Movassagh, 2016) which may influence their emotions. In this regard, one specific area that such contextualities interact with (ESP) teachers’ sense-making processes is the emotional side of their work, which is known as emotion labor (Benesch, 2017; Hochschild, 1979). Considering that previous research in the Iranian context (e.g., Derakhshan et al., 2023; Kaivanpanah et al., 2022) has shown the profound impact of contextual particularities on ESP teachers’ emotions, such contextual forces could cause emotion labor for them. In this regard, it is important to explore how context shapes ESP teachers’ emotions and results in teachers’ emotion labor, especially in the Iranian context where factors shaping their emotions could function more substantially (see Derakhshan et al., 2023).

Although there are traces of report on ESP teachers’ emotions in previous research (e.g., Atai et al., 2018; Estaji & Rahimi, 2014; Etherington et al., 2020), little research has focally explored ESP teachers’ emotions, and more specifically emotion labor. Such an exploration unpacks how institutional policies, discourses, and expectations shape ESP teachers’ work, and provides implications for the institutional and extra-institutional decision-makers to develop a better understanding of ESP teachers’ professionalism. The present study addresses this gap by reporting on Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor.

Literature review

Language teacher emotion labor

As a social practice which involves considerable emotional investment (Zembylas, 2003), teachers might experience a “conflict between implicit institutional feeling rules and discourses of teachers’ training and/or classroom experience” (Benesch, 2018, p. 63), which is called emotion labor (EL). Originated from Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) social-constructivist research on the interplay between unequal power relations and emotional experiences in the workplace (Benesch, 2020a, 2020b), the concept of EL describes how teachers attempt to manage their emotions in response to workplace localities (Nazari & Karimpour, 2022; Nazari et al., 2024; Song, 2021). EL refers to the regulation, management, and commodification of emotions in heeding workplace rules, discourses, policies, and standards (Hochschild, 1983). In addition, from a critical perspective, the concept of emotion labor is described as a complex and nonlinear concept that is constantly reproduced through interactions and power dynamics surrounding teachers in their workplace. Such workplace standards assume particular behaviors and displays of emotions that are deemed appropriate, acceptable, and professional, which Hochschild theorized as ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild, 1979). Conceptualizations of EL emphasize the post-structural character of emotional experiences in the space between internal feelings and feeling rules and discourses. For example, Benesch’s (2018) poststructural adaptation of feeling rules moves feelings beyond the realm of cognition to include social structures, hence defining EL as the contact “between implicit institutional feeling rules and discourses of teachers’ training and/or classroom experience” (Benesch, 2018, p. 63). Conceptualizing EL as discursively and critically shaped by wider sociopolitical and institutional norms, power relations, and practices, Benesch (2020a, 2020b) underlined the crucial role of these dimensions in understanding the multiple layers of factors shaping teachers’ EL.

From a critical perspective, EL is a complex, nonlinear, and multidimensional concept that is constantly reproduced through interactions and power dynamics surrounding teachers (Benesch, 2017, 2018). As teaching involves considerable emotional investment, teachers experience various emotional fluctuations regardless of whether they knowingly or unknowingly engage in exploring emotions (Nazari et al., 2023a; Zembylas, 2002, 2003). Relatedly, emotional rules are regulated by school systems and institutional policies imposing teachers into complying with commodified emotion behaviors ( Benesch, 2017; De Costa et al., 2018; Gkonou & Miller, 2021; Her & De Costa, 2022; Nazari et al., 2023b; Song, 2021). Additionally, awareness of EL empowers teachers to come to a deeper understanding of the institutional contexts, which leads to greater awareness of educational practices, policies, and discourses (Gkonou & Miller, 2021; Song, 2021; Zembylas, 2014).

There has been a surge of attention to research on language teachers’ EL in different educational contexts (e.g., Benesch, 2020a, 2020b; Dewaele & Wu, 2021; Gkonou & Miller, 2019, 2021; Her & De Costa, 2022; Kocabaş-Gedik & Ortaçtepe Hart, 2021; Song, 2021). This body of knowledge highlights that teachers’ emotions are in dynamic interaction with contextual definitions of power relations and existing discourses in shaping their emotional experiences. For instance, Her and De Costa (2022) adopted a critical approach and explored the emotion labor of one college instructor in California in response to a new language policy (i.e., AB 705 law). The researchers showed that instead of resisting the feeling rules or avoiding the EL that stemmed from the workplace, the participant teacher actively accrued emotional capital by developing tools for future work-related endeavors. Similar findings have been reported in Benesch (2018) among U.S. teachers in response to student plagiarism policies and agency, in Authors (2022) in the context of Iranian teachers’ emotion labor in relation to school assessment policies, and in Benesch (2020b) regarding 13 U.S. teachers’ activism.

The above literature shows that culture, ideology, discourse, and policy carry emotion-laden schemas that can profoundly shape teachers’ multidimensional emotional sense-making. One area that is argued to bear professional multidimensionality is ESP teachers’ job description (Basturkmen, 2014). However, the scope of research that focally addresses ESP teachers’ emotions and emotion labor is limited.

ESP teacher emotions

ESP is a well-established area of knowledge (Ding, 2019) that aims to “meet the needs of internationalization of higher education” (Hyland, 2006, p. 1). Within ESP, there has always been controversies regarding the role of teachers. Since Dudley-Evans and St. Johns’ (1998) conceptualization of ESP teachers’ five-pronged roles (i.e., teacher, researcher, collaborator, material selector and adaptor, and evaluator), ESP teachers have been understood as individuals who adopt agentive roles in socio-culturally contributing to institutional growth (Tao & Gao, 2018). From this perspective, ESP teachers’ contextual job descriptions are profoundly determining in how they navigate their ESP instruction. Such descriptions (i.e., policy and planning, pedagogical aspects, materials, and evaluation) have also been argued to serve as powerful tools in the range of emotions teachers experience and the identities they construct over time (Atai et al., 2018; Nazari & Karimpour, 2024; Tao & Gao, 2018).

For instance, Chang (2017), Atai et al. (2018), and Tao and Gao (2018) have indirectly reported how ESP teachers’ internal feelings clash with contextual definitions of ESP, and how such a clash functions as a site of experiencing emotional conflicts and tensions. This line of thinking has also reported on the identity and agency-bearing nature of such contextual descriptions in shaping ESP teachers’ professional performance. For example, Gu and Benson (2015), Mahendra (2020), and Rebenko (2021) has reported that when ESP teachers’ professional practices clash with contextual definitions of ESP instruction, they face various agency conflicts that negative influence their understandings and subsequent performances. Such clashes, as Basturkmen (2014) rightly argued, stem from ESP contextualities, governing discourses, and the various roles ESP teachers are expected to fulfill. In this study, we explore these expectations and discourses through the lens of emotion labor.

Despite the recent surge of attention to language teacher emotions in various educational contexts, this line of inquiry has not received due attention in ESP teacher education. Nonetheless, there are traces of emotion fluctuations in scholarship on ESP teachers. For example, Etherington et al. (2020) examined 12 ESP practitioners’ well-being and resilience in Saudi Arabia and the UK. Adopting a case study design and drawing on diaries and interviews, the researchers showed that while there were differences between the teachers of the two contexts, their emotions featured “the multilayered nature of the teachers’ emotional lives within complex, challenging professional situations” (p. 21). Similar findings were reported in Estaji and Rahimi (2014) in the context of Iranian ESP teachers’ resilience and the emotional conflicts they experienced due to dissonances between their understandings of ESP and the external policies and discourses. Moreover, Atai and Nejadghanbar (2017) examined Iranian ESP teachers’ subject-related critical incidents. The findings of the study highlighted the long-term impact of such incidents and their emotional trajectories on the teachers’ professional sense-making.

The literature highlights that due to the complex and multi-faceted nature of ESP teaching (Atai et al., 2018; Basturkmen, 2014), ESP teachers may experience various challenges that influence their professional sense-making, emotions, identities, and agencies (Tao & Gao, 2018). Such a multidimensionality of job description could particularly be a source of emotional tensions and conflicts when power relations, feeling rules, and dominant discourses that clash with ESP teachers’ internal feelings, which is the point we explore in this study.

The present study

It could be concluded from the above review that ESP teachers (1) need to fulfill various roles that may turn into a site of emotional and agentive struggles, (2) may experience various emotional tensions and conflicts due to the clash between their internal feelings and external expectations and discourses, and the gaps in their subject knowledge that may face them with subject knowledge dilemmas (Basturkmen, 2014), and (3) dialectically contribute to educational growth, yet do so by being emotionally (re)shaped in light of contextual descriptions of ESP instruction. Such a conceptualization of ESP teachers’ professionalism and emotional dynamics means that the emotion of ESP teachers should be of focal attention due to the functional role it plays in their professional growth (see the above section). However, research that focally examines the role of emotions in ESP teachers’ professionalism is lacking in the literature. More specifically, despite the functional role of contextual policies, expectations, and discourses in teachers’ emotions (e.g., Benesch, 2017; Her & De Costa, 2022) and ESP teachers’ professional practice (e.g., Campion, 2016; Ding, 2019), little research has examined how such contextual discourses shape ESP teachers’ emotions. The present study examines this aspect of ESP teachers’ professional practice by addressing the following question:

How do contextual expectations, discourses, and policies shape Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor?

Method

Context and participants

In Iran, the context of this study, higher education is supervised and delivered by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. This ministry is in charge of legislating policies for state universities (in which the candidates do not pay a fee for education, except the Pardis and Shabaneh students who should pay a fee) and works in conjunction with Azad and Payame-Noor universities that are privately-funded and in which the candidates pay a fee for education. Policy and planning, materials, evaluation, and curriculum are all set by the ministry, which is run by a minister as assigned by the government. Moreover, this sector runs the university matriculation exams and decides on the content of different disciplines based on local considerations.

Another sector in which language education is delivered and is of concern to this study is the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education. This sector offers content courses to students of various disciplines including Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Midwifery, etc. We chose this context as it is underrepresented in many studies of language teacher professionalism and it is becoming an emerging sector in establishing ESP departments in the Iranian context. From this perspective, ESP is delivered in two forms. The first one is a general English course, which is often a three-credit course and is usually offered in the first semester. This type of ESP is thus English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP). The second one is one or two three-credit technical English courses that are offered to students after passing the general English course; thus, this type of ESP is English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP). Depending on discipline, the students will be offered one or two three-credit ESAP courses. This perspective has also been underscored by Kaivanpanah et al. (2021) regarding the two types of ESP in Iran.

In this study, we focused on the participant teachers’ ESAP emotions in data collection (as we explain below). Students of medical education cover different topics in their textbooks including anatomy, physiology, pathology, diseases and treatments, diagnoses, body systems, and much more. The teachers of this sector receive no formal education in medicine or related disciplines, and most of them are either visiting professors or department faculties. Moreover, a hidden agenda is that the teachers of ESP departments are not acknowledged adequately in comparison to professors of other medicine-related disciplines and these professors consider their own role as more important. Abundant classes, crowded classes (usually more than 60 students), lack of appropriate materials, lack of recognition (from professors and students), low acknowledgement of teacher voice, economic inadequacy, and top–down evaluation are some of the problems many ESP teachers experience in the Iranian context (see Derakhshan et al., 2023, 2024; Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018; Soodmand Afshar & Movassagh, 2016), particularly medicine-related ESP teachers, as we show later. This context has thus provided a suitable opportunity for focally exploring how ESP teachers emotionally respond to medicine-related language teaching. Specifically, how contextual discourses and policies shape ESP teachers’ emotion labor could be well-examined in this context, which is the thread we followed in data collection. With this in mind, the ESP teachers in this study were selected based on the criteria of working in various ESP department, having extensive years of teaching experience as ESP teachers.

The participants of the study were 10 (T1–T10) teachers working in different medical universities of Iran. We selected the instructors through convenience and snowball sampling techniques. Their age ranged from 38 to 45 years and their ESP teaching experience ranged between 5 and 10 years. They taught general and technical courses of ESP to students of medicine in different universities. They also held PhD in Applied Linguistics from various state and Azad universities. Additionally, these participants were both visiting instructors and faculty members, which could well-unpack how ESP contextualities could shape the professional career of both groups of teachers. The approval of the participants was obtained before starting data collection and they were ensured that ethical considerations of maintaining their anonymity will be strictly observed to avoid subsequent repercussions.

Data collection

We collected data from three sources: a short questionnaire, narrative frames, and semi-structured interviews. These sources aimed at aggregating the types of contextual expectations and discourses shaping ESP teachers’ emotion labor, how such expectations positively and negatively shaped their emotional experiences, and how they engaged in managing emotions in such circumstances as well as the contributions of such an engagement for their professionalism.

The first step of data collection involved administering the questionnaire to the teachers to explore the expectations that shape their emotions. To this end, we asked the teachers to respond to this question: “We would be thankful if you list the range of expectations that are promoted in the higher education of the country, especially those which directly influence your professional career in your university. What types of expectations should you meet that relate directly to ESP instruction? You can write about in-class, administrative, assessment-related, policy-related, institution-related, collegiate, and generally any other expectation as far as they are related to the ESP work you do”. The teachers could provide short and general responses to the questionnaire regarding the range of expectations which were promoted in their workplace and then, via the narrative frame and interview they were asked to expand on their answers regarding the emotion labor they experienced. As we collected the data during the COVID-19 pandemic, the teachers could write their answers or send their voice-format responses through WhatsApp and in Persian (L1) or English.

We then asked the teachers to share a narrative of their ESP instruction when their emotions interacted with contextual descriptions of ESP. Our understanding of narrative inquiry, which here featured as narrative frame, was in line with examining the critical role of context in teachers’ sense-making processes and emotional experiences (see Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008; Barkhuizen & Consoli, 2021; Kayi-Aydar, 2021). Thus, we designed the narrative frame (Appendix A) around the teachers’ positive and negative emotional experiences, and how contextual policies, discourses, participants, and expectations shaped their emotions. Like the questionnaire, the teachers could respond to the frame in written or spoken formats and in either language they desired. The frames functioned as research methods that could be expanded on in the semi-structured interviews to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the teachers’ emotion labor.

After the questionnaire and narrative frames, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The interview functioned as a retrospective-introspective source (Mann, 2016) in that we aimed to obtain detailed responses pertaining to the contextual expectations and the teachers’ responses to the previous two research methods as well as to increase the trustworthiness of the Instruments. In this sense, the first two questions tapped into the teachers’ responses to the narrative frame questions by examining (1) talking in more depth about the positive and negative shared narratives, and (2) how such experiences had influenced the teachers’ emotion management, performances, and perceptions about themselves, students, colleagues, institutional functioning, and policies. The third question explored how the expectations the participants listed in response to the questionnaire influence their emotion management, performances, and perceptions about professional undertaking. The fourth question focally examined the teachers’ emotion labor as we asked them: “What feelings emerge when you face such expectations and tensions in the context of ESP teaching? Do you engage in managing your emotions? How? How do you feel about yourself and your job in such cases?”. We asked relevant follow-up questions when needed. The interviews lasted on average 50 min, were run in Persian, and were collected via WhatsApp. In addition, the researchers discussed various issues related to how to analyze the data to enhance the credibility of the interpretations. Thus, to ensure the trustworthiness of the analysis, besides engaging in joint discussions and analyses, we engaged in a code-recode strategy (Creswell, 2014) by coding the data over several time spans.

Data analysis

After collecting the data (10 questionnaires, 20 narratives, and 10 interviews) we engaged in analyzing them. In line with our research question, our focus was to conceptualize how contextual discourses, policies, and expectations shape the teachers’ emotion labor. To this end, we used the principles of grounded theory (GT) to reach a model that describes Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor. Due to its focus on open (micro-level), axial (intersective), and selective (overarching) coding procedures (see Strauss, 1987), GT could well-suit our data analysis to reach a model that characterizes the teachers’ emotion labor. With this theoretical stance in mind, before engaging in the analysis of data, we met some preliminary considerations including (1) translating the data into English, (2) transcribing the data, and (3) having memo-writing in mind (Charmaz, 2014) when we wanted to initiate the data analysis. We transcribed and translated the data into English due to our own preferences in analyzing the data in English more conveniently. Regarding the questionnaire data, we tabulated the expectations. We then engaged in developing emerging codes in line with the open coding stage of GT. Here, we wrote memos that we could turn back to later when the whole dataset has been coded. For example, when the teachers referred to the difficulty of medical terms in saving teachers’ face in front of students, this was coded as “content as a source of emotion labor of student expectations”. The memo we wrote, for example, was “student expectations/negative”. This type of analysis facilitated the procedure of analyzing the whole data for both of us in keeping a neat track of each data source and their collective intersections.

Once the initial codes were developed, we engaged in developing broader categories in line with the axial coding stage of GT. Here, we examined the data from the three sources to develop categories that interrelate and overlap across the sources. For example, when top-down evaluation was mentioned in the interviews, this was connected to the institutional expectations referred to in the questionnaire, and in turn to the emotional conflicts/strategies teachers experience when responding to this policy/expectation. It must be mentioned that across the whole stages of analysis, we kept in mind the role of contextual expectations in ESP teachers’ emotion labor to keep a neat track of data analysis. Upon reaching this stage, we conducted a retrospective review of our analysis to verify its accuracy and to increase the trustworthiness of the data analysis. We also engaged in peer discussions and individual and peer analysis to enhance the credibility of the interpretations. After analyzing the data iteratively and refining the codes and categories, a selective code was developed as “Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor”, which guides the rest of the paper, as we show below.

Findings

In what follows, the findings of the study are presented as (1) the range of expectations that ESP teachers are to fulfill and (2) how such expectations shaped the teachers’ emotion labor.

Table 1 indicates the range of expectations from Iranian ESP teachers as mentioned by the participants. It shows that such expectations are in turn associated with challenges in four major areas of pedagogy, assessment, materials, and curriculum.

Table 1 The expectations mentioned by Iranian ESP teachers

As mentioned earlier, the teachers were asked to share their narratives of ESP-related emotion labor and partook in semi-structured interviews that expanded on the expectations and process of experiencing emotion labor. Data analyses revealed that the teachers’ emotion labor involved clashes, tensions, and conflicts across each of the pedagogy, assessment, materials, and curriculum (Fig. 1), as explained below.

Fig. 1

Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor

Pedagogy

One of the sources of the teachers’ emotion labor was the pedagogical conflicts that arose from a clash between their internal feelings and contextual definitions of ESP instruction. Two themes of agency conflicts and subject knowledge dilemmas were central to this conflict.

Regarding agency, the teachers argued that as medicine-related disciplines usually recruit large number of students each year, it is difficult for them to actualize their mental plans effectively: “Each year, something around 60, 70, or more students are accepted in the university entrance examination of different medicine disciplines. When you enter the class and see this high number of students, you first become shocked and wonder how to teach to all these students” (T2, Interview). T5 referred to a similar problem in the context of exercising agency as: “To each teacher, it is important to teach the content effectively to all the students, especially here that students need the technical terminology of medicine in their future semesters and career. It is really problematic to teach the way you want considering the high number of students and this creates negative emotions of disappointment, helplessness, etc.” (Interview).

The second source of the teachers’ pedagogy-related emotion labor pertained to their own subject knowledge. T10, for example, linked this issue to the difficulty of medicine-related disciplinary content and said: “The content of midwifery subjects is really difficult. Although I have taught these courses several times, it is still difficult for me to personally connect closely to the range of difficult content I encounter here” (Interview). A thread among the teachers’ responses was the lack of adequate ESP instructors so that the classes could be distributed among them to lessen the burden of handling content: “Considering the content we teach, we need more instructors who can teach the courses, but there are few instructors who can guarantee perpetual maintenance and keeping their quality over time” (T4, Interview). T6 mentioned a similar point, with a specific reference to the emotional side of such subject knowledge hurdles: “It takes time to really master the content of many medical terminologies. Sometimes I feel that the students may underestimate me if I don’t know the content as good as they know. And there are so many classes that I really find little time to cover all the materials, especially when there are few colleagues so that we have more free time” (T6, Narrative Frame).

Assessment

Assessment was a major source of tension in the teachers’ emotions and contextual definitions of ESP. Top-down assessment policies were considered as a major source of tensions that question the teachers’ identity and sense-making. Two themes of embedding content and language in the final exam and heeding the use of content in during-class assessment techniques were the major sources of such tensions.

As to the content and language issue, the teachers were more oriented toward balancing content and language in the final exam multimodally, yet due to the multiple-choice format of the exam, they cannot actualize this issue and it is a course of experiencing negative emotions. For example, T5 referred to the importance of assessing the students’ linguistic and content knowledge, yet due to top-down policies this is not possible: “I really like to test the students’ pronunciation of technical vocabulary, but this is not possible. Or, I want to see how they comprehend a text that is about urology, but I can’t” (T5, Interview). T4 mentioned a similar point and the emotional bearing of such a top-down assessment policy: “The final exam must be multiple-choice. This way, I can’t measure how balanced the students know both the content and language of different issues about teeth [dentistry]. It bothers me and makes me feel that my personality and identity are not recognized” (T4, Interview).

Formative assessment during the course was another source of clash for the teachers. They held that they adopt different techniques to assess the students’ content knowledge during the class, but such formative assessment has little effect on the students’ final score, which makes the students less value their during-semester performance. For instance, T1 argued that: “I try to have frequent quizzes during the class to both learn from the students’ knowledge of pharmacological in their responses to exam questions and check their both content and language knowledge. But, as the students know that this during-class assessment has little effect on their final score, they show less tendency to perform well” (T1, Narrative Frame). T2 mentioned a similar point regarding the use of multiple assessment techniques during the class and the emotional tensions it creates: “I usually assess the students using role-plays, quizzes, short question and answer interactions etc. The point is that I encourage them to use technical vocabulary in their responses, but when I see that that are not that interested, I, honestly, become hopeless” (T2, Interview).

Materials

Institutional policies that pertained to materials and constrained their ability to tailor the textbooks were another source of emotion labor for the teachers. In this sense, two themes of lack of ESP teachers’ ability to adapt the materials due to pre-defined policies and incongruities among different ESP teachers were the major sources of clash.

With regard to adapting the materials, the teachers argued that as the textbooks are a source of final exam and open little room for teachers’ creativity, they are not able to respond to students’ ongoing needs. For example, T9 referred to the final exam issue and said: “As our classroom assessment forms little part of the students’ exam, we really teach to the test. That is, we have to cover the materials as effectively as the students don’t face any problems in the exam. But, I want to move beyond the textbook and have more activities” (T9, Narrative Frame). T4 referred to the lack of teachers’ creativity due to the high-load content of medicine-related textbooks: “Textbooks of medicine are full of difficult content and it takes most of the class time to cover these. This way, I can’t be creative in adapting the activities or change them. This is while the students have different needs and I can’t really respond to them. I am always in a rush to cover the book and this is really emotionally draining for me” (T4, Interview).

The second theme of the teachers’ materials-related emotion labor was the institutional expectation that teachers of different disciplines should cover the materials in a specific timeframe. The major objection of the teachers was that the content, length, and difficulty of different disciplines are not the same, which is a source of emotional tensions: “They expect us to finish the textbooks all at the same time. But, my dentistry textbook is different from the midwifery textbook. How could I manage to finish all of these at the same time?” (T5, Interview). T6 situated this issue within a teacher agency layer and argued for teachers’ collective efforts, as also mentioned by T1 in changing institutional policies by doing research, to take the initiative to function as a community of practice dealing with the material issue: “In my opinion, this issue requires us to be more active in having a united voice in covering the materials. We should form small communities that have shared interests in covering the materials to avoid collegial problems. This is quite likely to bring us support, collectivism, positive emotions, and more importantly effective activism” (T6, Interview).

Curriculum and culture

At a curricular level, the teachers’ emotion labor featured two institutional and sociocultural particularities. More specifically, clashes with content teachers as sources of professional power and lack of adequate collegial recognition were the major sources of emotion labor.

As to the institutional clashes with content teachers, the teachers argued that as content of the lessons, credits, and syllabi are primarily checked by content teachers and little attention is paid to ESAP teachers’ opinions, their technical knowledge is not recognized adequately. This issue was more related to the incongruities between the ESAP teachers’ knowledge of syllabus design, curriculum development, and material development during their PhD studies and their present condition in being second to content teachers. For example, in the following narrative, T8 refers to her background in Applied Linguistics and her technical knowledge. She, however, raises the clash she experiences between such knowledge of language teaching/learning and content teachers’ decision-making. She closes the narrative with the emotional and identity-related bearings of such a clash:

I have a PhD in Applied Linguistics. I have covered syllabus design, material development, textbook selection, curriculum development, methodology, testing, and much more during my education. And now here everything is done under the supervision of content teachers as if they know everything better. I know that I am working in the ESP context of medicine, but my expertise is much beyond content teachers in many of the areas I mentioned. This condition is really hurting my feelings as I think that my identity as an expert is not recognized. (Narrative Frame)

Another source of the teachers’ emotion labor pertained to the sociocultural particularity of perceptions about ESAP teachers in comparison to content teachers. The teachers held that this clash has become a discourse in the academic milieu of Iranian ESP context. For example, T3 referred to the emotional implications of such a discourse as: “They [content teachers] consider themselves as doctors and of a higher status in the university and society. This issue has given them a perception that they are higher and can speak braggartly. I don’t feel at ease in such conditions” (T3, Interview). T5 mentioned a similar point in relation to the collegial implications of such a discourse: “This condition makes the content teachers who are usually doctors think that they are a better colleague than us. I don’t like such perceptions and I think that we as colleagues should not hold such attitudes” (T5, Interview). Finally, T7 mentioned the implications of such a discourse for ESAP teachers’ identities in the eyes of the students: “I hope that our content colleagues don’t promote such perceptions among their students as this way this vicious circle goes on and we always have to strive to prove that we are just colleagues and no one is better than others just because of being in a specific discipline” (T7, Interview).

Discussion

This study explored Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor. The teachers’ responses indicated that Iranian ESP teachers working in the medical sector are faced with a myriad of challenges and expectations that shape their complex professional practice. Such a complexity involved various layers (see Table 1) whose crux was the way content interacts with the teachers’ sense-making processes, emotions, and identities (see Etherington et al., 2020; Tao & Gao, 2018) to shape their professional practice. Moreover, the teachers’ stated expectations indicate that it is not essentially the content itself that comes to (re)shape their professional practice; rather, various content-related discourses and participants also play a role in ESP teachers’ emotion labor and professionalism. This finding aligns with Basturkmen’s (2014) argument that institutional participants profoundly shape ESP teachers’ professional practice. Additionally, scholarship on Iranian ESP teachers has underscored the range of challenges they experience (e.g., Atai & Nejadghanbar, 2017; Kaivanpanah et al., 2021; Tavakoli & Tavakol, 2018). However, our findings show that such challenges are mingled with institutional expectations in which medicine-related content and participants play a functional role.

Pedagogically speaking, the teachers’ emotion labor featured two agency and subject knowledge-related conflicts. Besides the point that the high number of students was a source of experiencing negative emotions, this issue impeded the teachers’ effectively exercising agency. From this perspective, content functioned indirectly in that due to the high number of students being accepted in medicine-related disciplines, the teachers could not exercise agency effectively. Contextual descriptions constraining teacher agency and creating emotion labor has been underlined in the literature (e.g., Benesch, 2018; Her & De Costa, 2022), yet for our ESP teachers, this was directly related to the indirect and discursive power of content (i.e., medical education) and the policies that come to shape ESP teachers’ emotions and agency. Moreover, the teachers’ reference to subject knowledge as a source of emotion labor aligns with the two major themes Basturkmen (2014) identified as the role of subject knowledge and compensating initiatives they employ. For our teachers, such a knowledge was defined in the difficulty of medicine terminologies and their initiative was defined in having more colleagues who lessen the burden of workload. This finding could specifically offer implications for policymakers to pay attention to the emotion labor ESP teachers experience due to lack of adequate colleagues and high workload to adopt strategies to recruit more ESP teachers.

An area that profoundly challenged the teachers’ emotions and identities was assessment. Top-down policies of assessment for have been reported as a source of language teachers’ emotion labor (e.g., Authors, 2022; Benesch 2020a, 2020b; Kocabaş-Gedik & Ortaçtepe Hart, 2021) and ones which complicate ESP teachers’ professional practice (e.g., Atai & Nejadghanbar, 2017; Estaji & Rahimi, 2014). For our teachers, assessment was a source of emotion labor due to their inability to assess the students multimodally in the final exam as a result of top-down policies and the students’ lack of recognition for teacher assessment. In both cases, pre-defined policies were the major source of emotion labor. This finding corroborates earlier scholarship on the way power and policy shape teachers’ emotional experiences (Benesch, 2017; Zembylas, 2003). However, for our teachers this meant the amalgamation of power plus the teachers’ tendency to integrate both content and language in their assessment due to the nature of their work (i.e., ESP context of medicine). This finding adds to the body of knowledge on teacher emotion labor by highlighting the role of content and context of instruction as a determining factor in teachers’ emotional pulls and pushes as well as the existing policies.

The teachers’ emotion labor in relation to materials was largely defined in their inability to adapt the materials to the students’ needs and the necessity of uniform coverage of materials. Despite the significance of the role of ESP teachers as material adaptors (Basturkmen, 2014; Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998), our teachers’ inability was colored by institutional power, the retroactive effect of final exam, and content difficulty of medical terminologies that complicated their creativity (see Chang, 2017). This finding shows that top-down policies (here final exam) that do not basically aim to limit ESP teachers’ material-related effectiveness come to create emotion labor by the discursive ideology they promote. Additionally, that ESP teachers of all disciplines should cover the material in a due time, irrespective of the content issues, indicates the clash between policies and content. That is, it seems that policies are prioritized over content. Interestingly, the teachers’ argument that ESP teachers should exercise agency by forming small communities of practice in relation to material coverage shows that although the overarching policies may not be conquerable, the teachers could draw on their collectivist perceptions to transform their material-related emotion labor into a site of mutual and community-laden emotionality. This finding could also be a rich ground for further research on ESP teachers’ emotion labor in communities of practice and the way they transform their negative emotions into positive experiences, especially in relation to materials and material development.

The last theme of the teachers’ emotion labor pertained to curricular and cultural particularities. The common thread in both curricular and cultural job descriptions of ESP instruction was the lack of recognition for ESP teachers. This finding parallels the interpersonal and intergroup levels of teacher emotions Zembylas (2002) mentions. That is, the institutional side of content instructors’ arrogance and the social description of their higher status, according to our teachers, have been a site of experiencing emotion labor whose realization was in their lack of being recognized both institutionally and socially. More specifically, the functional role of content here featured as a particularity that circulates in the nexus between sociocultural descriptions and institutional manifestations. Additionally, such a discourse of unequal power relation and distribution is dialectically reproduced by content teachers. This was the major point our teachers pointed out as a discourse that is likely to last over time and extend to the ESP students’ learning schema. These findings show that unequal power relations may not always bet attributable to external factors. Instead, it may be the individuals (here content teachers) themselves who fuel such relations, perhaps for (re)shaping their status, or keeping their distance from ESP teachers, or intentionally reproducing the same discourses of unequality in their collegial connections.

Conclusion

The above findings indicated that Iranian ESP teachers’ emotion labor featured four areas of pedagogy, assessment, materials, and curriculum and culture. Across all of the themes, content (manifolding in pedagogical, collegial, and discursive terms) featured as a significant factor in the teachers’ emotions, agency, and identity. These findings contribute to the body of knowledge on ESP teachers’ professionalism by showing how institutional expectations and existing discourses shape ESP teachers’ professional career. More specifically, the way content shapes ESP teachers’ emotional experiences as mingled with their performance and self-perceptions extend the discussion on ESP teachers’ professional career. However, content influenced such emotional processes directly, indirectly, and specifically through content-related discourses and participants. These findings mean that it is not necessarily the content itself that along with language shape ESP teachers’ work; rather, the way content manifolds in institutional work and interacts with language through various contextualities and participants functions profoundly in ESP teachers’ work.

The findings of the study provide implications for ESP teachers. Considering the ideologically-laden and policy-driven nature of ESP teachers’ work in Iran (e.g., Authors, 2022), it seems that they could effectively draw on their own potentials to change institutional expectations. We specifically find the teachers’ arguments to form communities of practice that have shared concerns and respond to their ongoing needs of relevance here. Given that higher-order policies are hard to change, ESP teachers could form such communities of practice in their departments to adapt the policies and expectations to the contextualities of their work. In this regard, using lesson study, peer mentoring, professional workshops, and webinars that contain specific modules would be effective alternatives. Specifically, if the ESP teachers’ emotions are mixed with such professional initiatives before and after the events, they are likely to experience less negative emotions and transform such emotions into mutual emotionality, agentive decisions, and generally identity-related positive contributions.

Additionally, as one of the teachers (T1) mentioned that they have taken the initiative to step toward changing the institutional character of ESP teaching by doing research, it seems that such agentive actions could be an effective alternative. Particularly, if ESP teachers show such agency (in different forms) across the pedagogy, assessment, materials, and curriculum dimensions, they are likely to use their emotions as agency (see Benesch, 2018). The key here is not necessarily resisting institutional expectations and policies. Rather, any agentive action could be a site of changing emotional tensions and conflicts into a site of professional growth. Once such agentive action could be reducing the gap between ESP and content teachers. As we observed, such a gap could be a site of experiencing negative collegial, emotional connections. Thus, both teacher groups could use their collegial ties as a source of experiencing positive emotions, which is fed by an agentive action and contributes to their collegial growth. This is a point that we specifically believe demands further attention from researchers across various contexts. Research across other contexts is needed to respond to questions such as: How do content and ESP or language teachers navigate their collegial ties? (How) do they engage in agentive actions that positively respond to their emotional demands? What contributions such an engagement bring both content and ESP teachers emotionally, agentively, and in identity terms? (How) do they interact with institutional expectations, policies, and discourses in shaping their emotions, agency, and identity? And much more.

The present study had limitations that offer potential lines for future research. First, we collected data only from 10 teachers. Collecting data from a greater number of teachers, especially through questionnaires, would provide a more transparent picture of policies across different ESP departments. Second, we did not explore the teachers’ agentive actions in changing the institutional policies in greater depth. This point could specifically be a fruitful agendum for future research. Third, we collected the data during the pandemic and thus could not observe the teachers’ classes. Future research that employs classroom observation (both online and face-to-face) would show how teachers’ in-class emotions interact with institutional expectations. Recognizing these limitations, we hope that the findings of this study help ESP teachers and policymakers pay more focal attention to the substantial role emotions play in ESP teachers’ professional practice to transform their emotion labor into emotion work and ultimately into emotional wellbeing.

Appendices

Appendix A

Narrative frame

The most positive emotional event I have experienced in my university classes has been when I ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… This even is important because it made me feel that as a teacher………………………………………………………….. It created changes in my understanding about (myself, students, whoever involved) because …………………..

The most negative emotional event I have experienced in my university classes has been when I ………….…………….. This even is important because it made me feel that as a teacher I……..

…………………….. It created changes in my understanding about (myself, students, whoever involved) because ………………………………………………………………………………….