EFL Teachers' Sources of Remote Teaching Anxiety: Insights and Implications for EFL Teacher Education

Abstract

Introduction: This study aims to explore an under-researched issue; namely, remote teaching anxiety.

Methods: This study employed a sequential mixed-methods exploratory design where participants initially reported their remote teaching anxiety sources and then rated each. For the analysis, inductive content analysis and statistical tests were employed.

Results: The content analysis revealed two major themes: digitalisation-related concerns and online pedagogy-related concerns. Statistically significant difference was only found between anxiety sources and online teaching experience but not between gender, age, teaching experience, work setting and anxiety sources.

Discussion: Several studies (Çoklar, Efilti, Şahin, & Akçay, 2016; Hassan et al., 2019) found digitalisation-related concerns causing stress among teachers; however, remote teaching anxiety remains an underexplored construct (Russell, 2020). Although online pedagogy-related concerns were found to cause teaching anxiety in our study, a recent study (Lazarevic & Bentz, 2020) found using technology helpful to decrease anxiety.

Limitations: The data were limited to the views of 96 EFL teachers in the Turkish context.

Conclusion: We can conclude that limited experience with remote teaching can contribute to higher anxiety among EFL teachers. Additionally, this research can contribute to the relevant literature with several implications on the future of language education.