Introduction

Teachers are claimed to be the “architects of society” (Hiver and Dörnyei 2017) both with the responsibility of training upcoming communities and the ability to affect the learners’ future. Teachers are not only in charge of equipping the students with academic skills, but also they need to educate the students psychologically (Skinner and Beers 2016). Therefore, psychology has an undeniable role in the field of education. Due to the attention paid to the “learner as the agency” concept in the process of learning/teaching, affective factors on learners have received interest more than the psychological traits affecting teachers (Mercer et al. 2016). It is known that educational environments can be surrounded by a psychologically negative climate (Saha and Dworkin 2009). Similarly, language teachers may feel pressure from the administration, parents, lack of teacher autonomy, demands of learners, and lack of administrative support (Hiver and Dörnyei 2017). Language teachers create a defense mechanism due to high levels of stress, anxiety, and lack of motivation. This defense mechanism, which is termed “immunity,” has received recent attention in the field of language/teaching (Hiver 2015, 2017; Hiver and Dörnyei 2017). “Immunity” is defined as a system “that protects them against the negative, undesirable, harmful impact of the external factors” (Hiver and Dörnyei 2017).

Language teacher immunity may emerge in two distinct forms: productive (positive) and maladaptive (negative). More precisely, productive teacher immunity support hope, motivation, and commitment against the demands of the language teaching profession; however, maladaptive teacher immunity leads to apathy, cynicism, emotional, and physical exhaustion. Additionally, maladaptive teacher immunity results in avoiding risk-taking, evading recent methodologies, keeping up with routines that prevent teachers from change (Hiver 2015).

The aim of this article is to investigate the language teacher immunity from the perspective of self-organization within the theoretical framework of Complexity Theory (CT) in two different contexts. Specifically speaking, teaching self-efficacy, burnout, attitudes toward teaching, resilience, openness to change, positive classroom affectivity, and coping strategies of the participants will be explored comparatively.

Language teacher immunity

Teachers’ professional well-being is important for the quality of instruction and high levels of student achievement (Hakanen et al. 2006). The recently proposed concept, “immunity” (Hiver 2015), helps understand the resistance to stress, emotional overload, and demotivating factors. These situations occur in contexts where there are restrictions on teaching autonomy, challenges for language teachers to constantly increase their knowledge, and demands from learners (Hiver and Dörnyei 2017). The existing situation of the language teaching profession requires conservatism, resistance to up-to-date information, and change which is mostly the result of relying on rituals, developing detachment and cynical attitudes caused by the negative psychological factors (Littlewood 2007). This attitude is a defense mechanism against high levels of stress and burnout. Therefore, language teacher immunity started to receive scientific attention as a significant dimension of language teacher identity and motivation.

In the field of psychology, concepts were termed: coping (techniques that remedy stressors or change how the stressful situation is perceived) (Somerfield and McCrae 2000), burnout (syndrome resulting from the experience of prolonged stress) (Maslach and Jackson 1981), hardiness (personality disposition thought to buffer the effects of stress on performance) (Maddi 2004), buoyancy (self-perceptions of ability to overcome anxiety) (Martin and Marsh 2008), and resilience (capacity to recover adversity) (Masten 2001).

Language teacher immunity aggregates these concepts. When conceptualizing teacher immunity, Hiver and Dörnyei (2015) propose resilience, coping, burnout, self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes toward teaching, openness to change, and classroom affectivity as related constructs. These constructs are operationalized as follows:

  1. a.

    Resilience is the capacity to recover from experiences of psychological adversity or maintain effective functioning despite traumatic circumstances (Masten 2001)

  2. b.

    Self-efficacy beliefs are the judgments they make about how effectively they can engage students and help them to learn (Bandura 1977; Klassen et al. 2011),

  3. c.

    Coping techniques that are thought to counteract or remedy stressors (Somerfield and McCrae 2000),

  4. d.

    Burnout is the syndrome resulting from the experience of prolonged stress,

  5. e.

    Attitudes toward teaching are teachers’ sense of purpose, and commitment to the profession,

  6. f.

    Openness to change is teachers’ receptivity toward change and novelty in their practice,

  7. g.

    Classroom affectivity is teachers’ positive emotional energy in the classroom.

In the field of language teaching, the adaptation process of systems into the environments is one of the common areas of research (Larsen-Freeman 2012). Complexity theory (CT) which helps scholars to understand the forces of change in systems is a theoretical framework. This study is mainly informed by the notions of self-organization (i.e., the spontaneous process by which higher-level order emerges from the local interaction of disordered components) within the CT. Four main phases of the developmental patterns of self-organization appeared through empirical studies: triggering, linking, realignment, and stabilization.

A trigger such as perturbation is needed for the process of self-organization (Kiel 1991). High-intensity threats such as managing student behavior and evaluations to determine a teachers’ employment future are some of these threats.

In the self-organization process, the system tries to turn any event to its advantage (Manson 2001). In other words, coupling helps push the system out of any chaos (Haken et al. 1995). To illustrate, when the L2 teacher faces such problems, they develop coping strategies to focus on productive features of their practice.

In the realignment stage, although the teachers continue to experience uncertainty, they develop a relationship between the disturbances and response options that allow them to return to productivity. In the final stage of the process, L2 teachers congeal the outcome through narratives. With the help of this narrative formation, the process settles into a robust attractor state of teacher immunity.

Thus, language teacher immunity is a defensive reaction against events occurring during a crisis. This means that language teachers may not continue to work unless they have the necessary protective immunity. Productive immunity acts both as a safeguard and a facilitator when faced with hazardous conditions. On the other hand, excessive stability over time may lead to maladaptive immunity. In other words, defensive coping strategies might work against stressors in the short run; however, it turns to be insufficient in the long run. (Carver et al. 1989). This situation reflects in their resistance to change or innovation. Therefore, it is suggested that when preferred as a concept in research, language teacher immunity should be read cautiously.

Being a recent concept introduced into the field of language teacher education (Hiver 2015; Hiver and Dörnyei 2017), “Language teacher immunity” received attention in the field of language teaching and teacher education (Hiver 2015, 2017; Hiver and Dörnyei 2017; Ordem 2017; Haseli Songhori et al. 2018; Saydam 2019).

Ordem (2017) focused on a teacher’s conception and views of adaptive skill, self, and motivation while dealing with problems in a certain foreign language classroom environment in a case study that was idiographic, longitudinal, and phenomenographic. The study which observed the relationship between the teacher’s reflection on the class and the students’ feedback for 3 months showed that the teacher demonstrated maladaptive behaviors with low motivation with a constant reflection on previous experiences and possible ideal self and high self-efficacy in a classroom setting.

A study conducted in the Iranian context explored what type of language teacher immunity was dominant among Iranian English teachers and how the teachers might have developed an immunity type. The findings indicated that maladaptive immunity was a dominant type of immunity among Iranian English teachers since the mean scores of six out of seven questionnaire subscales were low. Also, the results revealed that Iranian English teachers followed the four stages of self-organization, namely, triggering, coupling, realignment, and stabilization in forming their immunity (Haseli Songhori et al. 2018).

In another study, Saydam (2019) investigated how language teacher immunity develops and functions. Furthermore, the study examined the motivational implications and consequences of language teacher immunity, and explored the ways of rebooting maladaptive teacher immunity. The results of the in-depth individual interviews revealed that productively and maladaptively immunized teachers follow different paths of development through the self-organization process, and various factors affect their immunity levels. Finally, the study explored ways of transforming maladaptive teacher immunity into a productive form of immunity.

As can be seen in the literature review discussed above, none of the research articles focused on the concept from a comparative perspective as this paper aims. For this purpose, this study aims to investigate the language teacher immunity from the perspective of self-organization within the theoretical framework of Complexity Theory (CT) in two settings considering the year of experience. Teaching self-efficacy, burnout, attitudes toward teaching, resilience, openness to change, positive classroom affectivity, and coping strategies of the participating language teachers will be explored in a comparative manner considering the place of work and year of experience.

The study was guided by the following research questions:

  1. 1.

    Is there a significant difference in language teacher immunity in relation to the place of work?

  2. 2.

    Is there a significant difference in language teacher immunity in relation to years of experience?

Methodology

Participants

Participants were 130 English language teachers working at two higher education institutions in two different countries. Following a convenient sampling process, language teachers in two settings with different backgrounds, Qatar (n = 66) and Turkey (n = 64), volunteered to participate in the study. The detailed distribution of participants according to demographic data is displayed in Table 1. The participants varied in terms of a) place of work, b) being native and non-native, c) years of experience (1–5, 6–10, 11–15, and 16 and more), and c) degree of graduation (BA, MA, and Ph.D.).

Table 1 Descriptive analysis on categorical variables of participants
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Instrument

A questionnaire was used for the present study on the assessment of teacher immunity. The questionnaire, originally a published measurement instrument (Hiver 2015), had seven constructs on the theoretical considerations of immunity: (a) Teaching self-efficacy (α = 0.82) (b) resilience (α = 0.82), (c) coping (α = 0.78), (d) burnout (α = 0.80), (e) attitudes toward teaching (α = 0.85), (f) openness to change (α = 0.74), and (g) classroom affectivity. It included 39 items on a 5-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). After receiving institutional permissions, the questionnaire was administered online. The questionnaire had a letter of consent for the participants, and those who agreed to participate after singing the consent letter completed the survey. The questionnaire had questions on categorical variables on the place of work, origin, years of experience, and the degree of education.

Data analysis

The data were analyzed quantitatively on SPSS 26. Initially, descriptive analyses helped see the overall distribution of responses with the frequency on the variables of the place of work, origin, and years of experience. In order to see if there is a statistically significant difference, Independent-Samples Mann–Whitney U and Independent-Samples Kruskal–Wallis Tests were carried out. Using these t tests for the comparisons on the place of work, and years of experience, significant differences were examined on how language teacher immunity is manifested on the seven immunity constructs in different settings, namely place of work, and experience. In addition to the comparisons with t tests, the means on the seven constructs through descriptive analyses were used to see the strengths and weaknesses with regard to language teacher immunity for place of work and years of experience. The descriptive findings on the distribution of responses with the means contributed to define the difference and clarify further the source of the significant difference for the given variables.

Results

The study precisely examined the language teacher immunity with comparative analyses on place of work and years of service. The comparisons on place of work and years of experience highlighted some findings with significant differences in language teacher immunity. These significant differences in the place of work and years of experience are presented in sets for the seven constructs of the theoretical considerations of immunity: (1) teaching self-efficacy, (2) resilience, (3) coping, (4) burnout (5) attitudes toward teaching, (6) openness to change, and (7) classroom affectivity.

Place of work

Significant differences in the teacher immunity regarding the place of work were found in four out of seven constructs within nine individual items. Specifically, the significant difference manifested itself in (1) resilience, (2) burnout, (3) attitudes toward teaching, and (4) classroom affectivity. To understand the difference further, nine statements out of thirty-nine items on seven constructs were examined individually with the comparisons of means to clarify the source of difference.

There is a statistically significant difference for two items in relation to resilience as displayed in Table 2. To be more precise with the results, findings indicate that language teacher immunity differs according to the place of work in terms of resilience, which reflects itself in two ways. There is a statistically significant difference in how teacher get through difficult times (p = 0.01 < 0.05) and how they bounce back after difficulties (p = 0.03 < 0.05). When the means are individually examined, it is seen that the language teachers working in Qatar (4.33) agree that they can get through difficult times as they have experienced difficulty before, while the language teachers in Turkey (3.93) feel neutral on the same item. For the second item on resilience, the means show teachers working in Qatar (3.75) and Turkey (3.31) both report that they are neutral in terms of bouncing back quickly after hard times.

Table 2 Resilience
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The findings, as shown in Table 3, indicated that there is a significant difference in relation to place of work in two items regarding burnout. There is a statistically significant difference on two items between the language teachers working in Turkey and Qatar in terms of feeling burnout (p = 0.00 < 0.05). Specifically, the means indicate that the participants in Turkey (2.25) do not that they feel burnout while the participants working in Qatar (3.16) report they feel neutral regarding the same item. Moreover, there is a significant difference between the participants in Turkey and Qatar regarding the feeling of insecurity (p = 0.04 < 0.05). However, the means show that the participants working in Qatar (2.68) and Turkey (2.2) both disagree that there are days when they feel insecure at school.

Table 3 Burnout
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There is also a significant difference between the language teachers working in Qatar and Turkey regarding their attitudes toward teaching. Table 4 shows the statistical analyses for attitudes toward teaching. The analysis shows that there is a significant difference regarding the item on the enjoyment of working as a teacher (p = 0.02 < 0.05). The means show that participants from Turkey (4.3) and Qatar (4.03) both agree that they enjoy working as a teacher as it brings them pleasure. However, the participants working in Qatar report that they enjoy working as a teacher slightly more than the participants in Turkey. There is another significant difference regarding choosing to be a teacher (p = 0.02 < 0.05). The means highlight that participants from Turkey (2.25) and Qatar (2.78) disagree with the idea that they would not choose to be a teacher if they could choose an occupation today. Similarly, a significant difference exists in terms of the place of work considering teachers' reflection on tempting to leave the teaching profession (p = 0.00 < 0.05). When the means examined, it is clear that the language teachers working in Turkey (1.79) and Qatar (2.5) both report that they disagree that they are tempted to leave the teaching profession (p = 0.02 < 0.05).

Table 4 Attitudes toward teaching
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Finally, the classroom affectivity shows significant differences in terms of the place of work. There is a significant difference in terms of the place of work regarding the inspiration that the teachers have in the classroom or at school (p = 0.01 < 0.05). The means report that teachers working in Turkey (4.00) agree that they feel inspired at school or in the classroom while the participants in Qatar (3.64) feel neutral on the same item. Similarly, a significant difference is seen between the teachers working in Turkey and Qatar regarding the expectation of more good things to happen in the classroom than the bad things (p = 0.00 < 0.05). Similarly, language teachers working in Turkey (4.07) and Qatar (4.37) agree that they expect more good things to happen in the classroom than bad (Table 5).

Table 5 Classroom activities
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Years of experience

In addition to place of work, the study aimed to see if experience leads to any difference in language teacher immunity. Years of experience, namely the length of service in the profession, were clustered in four gradual levels (a) having experience between one and 5 years, (b) 6 and 10 years, (c) 11 and 16, (d) 16 and more. Further analyses presented below in successive tables for different immunity constructs display the significant differences in language teacher immunity related to years of experience and present the source of difference among these four stages of work experience.

Firstly, as seen in Table 6., statistically significant differences were seen in three items on teaching self-efficacy when the experience is considered. The language teachers differed in terms of their responses to the confidence they have in their professional ability to help students learn. The significant difference lies in the comparison between the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 1 to 5 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05); the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (p = 0.01 < 0.05); and the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 11 to 15 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05). The findings indicate the significant difference between the teachers having 16 years or more experience and the other groups with varying degrees of experience. The means show that the teachers having experience with 16 years or more (1.16), with one to 5 years (1.84), with 6 to 10 years (1.41), and the ones with experience from 11 to 15 years (1.50) disagree on not having confidence in their professional ability to help students learn. Although they claim to have a confidence in their professional ability to help students learn, there is a significant difference between these sets on the years of experience.

Table 6 Teaching self-efficacy
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Additionally, there is a significant difference in relation to years of experience in terms of sufficient training and experience to deal with any learning problems. To be more precise on the degree of significance, there is a significant difference between the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 1 to 5 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05); between the language teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05); and the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 11 to 15 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05). The findings with the means on the responses show that the teachers with 16 or more years of experience (4.4) claim to agree that they have enough training and experience to deal with almost any learning problem in the classroom while the language teachers with experience from 1 to 5 years (3.1), from 6 to 10 years (3.7), and the ones from 11 to 15 years (3.8) report to be neutral on the same item. The difference in these means explains the significant difference regarding the year of experience on item asking the sufficient training and experience to deal with any learning problems.

As the final item regarding teaching self-efficacy, the significant difference is seen between the language teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 1 to 5 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05) and between the ones with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05) in terms of not being certain of making a difference in the lives of students.

With the means on responses, it is seen that the teachers with 16 or more years of experience (1.91), teachers with experience from 1 to 5 years (2.6), and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (2.3) all disagree with the idea that they are not certain in making a difference in the lives of the students.

Second, as it is seen in Table 7, considering the years of experience as an independent variable, there is a statistically significant difference in resilience with one item. The difference lies in between the language teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05), and the teachers with 16 or more years of experience and those with experience from 11 to 15 years (p = 0.02 < 0.05) on the tendency to bounce back quickly after hard times.

Table 7 Resilience
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The findings with the means on the responses indicate that the teachers with 16 or more years of experience (3.9) and the ones with experience from 11 to 15 years (3.4) feel neutral in terms of bouncing back more quickly after hard times while the language teachers with experience from 6 to 10 years (2.9) disagree about bouncing back more quickly after hard times.

Being the last significant finding on the comparisons, two items on classroom affectivity have a significant difference in relation to the years of experience (Table 8). The statistically significant difference is seen first on the expectation of the things to go as they are planned. The difference lies between the participants with experience from 1 to 5 years and those with experience from 6 to 10 years (p = 0.00 < 0.05).

Table 8 Classroom affectivity
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With the means, the participants having experience with 1 to 5 years (3.0) report that they are neutral in terms of the statement that they hardly expect the classroom activities to go as planned, whereas the ones with experience from 6 to 10 years (2.03), and the ones with 16 or more years of experience (2.53) claim that they disagree about the idea that they hardly expect things to go as planned at work.

The last item on classroom affectivity has a significant difference (p = 0.00 < 0.05). The item is about the expectancy of having more good things happen in the classroom than bad ones. The findings show that there is a significant difference between the participants with experience from 1 to 5 years of experience and the ones with 16 or more years of experience (p = 0.02 < 0.05). The participants with experience from 1 to 5 years of experience (3.84) feel neutral while the ones with 16 or more years of experience (4.41) agree about the idea that they expect more good things to happen in the classroom than the bad ones.

Discussion

In spite of not with all constructs, the current study indicated that there are some significant differences in language teacher immunity considering the place of work and years of experience.

All in all, it is clear that the place of work for language teachers is a factor which contributes to teacher immunity. However, the study indicated that language teacher immunity shows a significant difference for a few traits on the constructs regarding the place of work. The significant difference in language teacher immunity for the place, in a large part, lies in the construct on attitudes toward teaching. This significant difference can be logically explained in various ways.

First, the most probable explanation would be to consider the nature of the place of work and its emphasis on teaching. As it is stated in the literature, teacher stress and disturbance have an obvious impact on teacher immunity. The teachers may reflect on the disturbances in their profession with novel responses in the framework of self-organization (Banzhaf 2009). Hiver (2015) discusses this reflection with the term of causality in the developmental stages of self-organization. Putting it in other words, the nature of the place of work will ultimately have its demands, challenges, and praise system, all of which could eventually shape the attitudes toward teaching in any professional setting. In this sense, with its essence, the place of work will have a significant difference in language teacher immunity for attitudes toward teaching. Additionally, another plausible explanation for the significant difference in language teacher immunity for attitudes toward teaching could be the demographic nature of the participants as one research setting outweighs the other one in terms of the distribution of the population regarding the years of experience, degree of education, and being native or non-native.

Second, language teacher immunity manifested itself partially with significant differences for the years of experience. Teacher immunity, a system developing or changing over time, may reflect itself in positive or negative ways. This manifestation is formed with negative and positive experiences, following individually dependent stages, which lead to stabilization (Haseli Songhori et al. 2018). However, various factors could shape the process that the teachers go through while reaching the stabilization stage, which ends either with productive or maladaptive immunity. With the findings highlighting no significant difference in most of the language immunity constructs regarding the years of experience, the study confirmed that stabilization in relation to experience can occur with various teacher immunity constructs for language teachers at any stage of professional development. As teacher immunity is claimed to be a defense system in a teaching career, some productive immunity traits possibly are acquired in the early stages of a profession in response to the needs or disturbances. This assumption may potentially lead to the conclusion that only some constructs may be subject to either change or develop throughout the years, while some are stabilized earlier. To be more precise with the findings related to the years of experience, the findings highlighted that significant differences mostly lie in the construct of teaching self-efficacy of teaching immunity. With this exact finding, significant differences in teacher immunity in relation to the years of experience are parallel with the claims in the literature on the same topic. Similarly, Rahmati et al. (2019) found the professional stress, resulting from various factors, as a source of varying teaching immunity reflections. Their study pointed out the need for strategies in the coupling stage during the self-organization process to deal with the disturbances to increase professional efficacy. In addition to these, the current study found out that some of the traits of immunity on resilience and classroom affectivity have a significant difference in terms of years of experience. That is, self-organization within the theoretical framework of Complexity Theory (CT) is reflected in the findings with significant differences as the traits of given constructs require core professional hands-on experience such as classroom affectivity. However, bearing in mind that it is not in the scope of the study to examine the level of language teacher immunity, the study aimed at seeing if any significant difference exists in language teacher immunity in terms of years of experience and place of work. Thus, the stated significant differences may not lead to any indication of maladaptive or productive immunity (Hiver and Dörnyei 2017). Moreover, regarding teaching self-efficacy, experiential knowledge represents one of the main components of teaching practice. In that sense, the instructional effectiveness may usually lie beyond the conceptualization of the teaching profession, as it requires gradual levels or phases of practice (Farrell 2016). Another significant difference in teaching immunity in relation to the years of experience is seen in the classroom affectivity. It is clear that the findings on classroom affectivity with the significant differences in some traits of language teacher immunity emphasize the gradual phases of practice namely the stages, which the language teachers go through the profession. This finding confirms the proposal (Hiver 2015) on the developments or changes in language teacher immunity with time.

Implications

With a limited number of constructs on teacher immunity being significantly different according to place of work and experience, the findings of the study suggest some implications for the practices in various education fields. As language teachers’ well-being is one of the fundamental factors affecting teaching performance, support on the specific needs could be provided to the teachers to strengthen teacher immunity, which could contribute positively on teaching performance. For that purpose, policy makers may have an attempt on understanding the possible factors affecting language teacher immunity such as teaching loads and extracurricular activities. To sum up, policy makers should not neglect the factors contributing to language teachers’ well-being for a better language teaching and learning process.

Limitations

On the other hand, the present study may have some limitations to generalize the findings. The findings and implications refer to only language teachers since teachers from various other majors were not included in the study. Moreover, the study made comparisons on the language teacher immunity in relation to the place of work and years of experience. Other variables such as gender, education level, and age could affect teacher immunity and could be considered for further comparisons on language teacher immunity.

Conclusion

This study aimed at investigating how teacher immunity manifests itself when the place of work and years of experience are considered for language teachers. The findings indicated that most of the constructs of teacher immunity do not show any difference for language teachers working in different settings with different years of experience. The significant differences exist only with a few of the traits on the teacher immunity for place of work and years of experience.

The literature proposes the gradual professional development for a number of traits required for educators and language teachers considering the years of experience. The findings of this study confirm that there is an underlying stable immunity, namely stabilization, for teachers to accomplish the fundamentals of the teaching profession in these stages of professional development. Additionally, the findings reveal that there are significant differences among few of the traits from language teacher immunity construct. Language teacher immunity constructs varying according to the place of work are logically justifiable and meaningful since individually each educational setting could reflect its nature with specific requirements for the language teachers in service.