The intersections of career motivational profiles and the well-being of early-career language teachers

Teaching is an inherently taxing profession that presents teachers with various educational, social, and societal challenges, all of which have a significant impact on teachers' well-being. Although it is acknowledged that motivation may influence teachers' overall well-being, there exists a gap in empirical evidence regarding the intersection of EFL teachers' career motivational profiles and their well-being. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the well-being of early-career EFL teachers across different motivational profiles. To this purpose, the study followed a qualitatively-driven mixed methods design. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews, narrative frames, and a questionnaire were utilized with 25 teachers to identify teachers' motivational profiles for the second phase, which was purely qualitative. Eight teachers were selected from the initial pool of 25 based on the strongest alignment between their interview responses and questionnaire results regarding their predominant motivational types to explore their well-being through semi-structured interviews and narrative frames. The comparative analyses yielded two major themes: (a) the tendency to institutional and occupational turnover and (b) emotional withdrawal and emotional engagement. Findings have the potential to redefine teacher recruitment processes by drawing attention to the motivational profiles of prospective teachers and to deepen stakeholders' understanding of the significant influence of career motivational profiles on teachers' well-being, which may subsequently impact students' outcomes as well as other aspects of teacher functioning.