Investigating the Effect of Well-Being on Self-Concept and Professional Development with the Mediation of Gender and Teaching Experience

Along with the cognitive aspects of language learning, some other factors can explain the general failure/success of language education. Due to the dearth of attention to the emotional factors contributing to language learning in the field of EFL, it seems a thorny issue to study these factors. Scholars in the realm of psychology have considered negative emotions, such a sadness and anger, than to positive emotions in their psychological studies and these elements have been examined in relation to EFL learners. The role of positive emotions has not been investigated sufficiently, especially in terms of EFL teachers. To this end, 220 male and female EFL teachers of advanced proficiency level with at least 5 years of teaching experience were selected based on convenient sampling. The instruments included the well-being PERMA Questionnaire developed by Butler and Kern (2016), Professional Development (PD) designed by Afshar and Ghasemi (2018), and Robson Self-Concept Questionnaire (SCQ) developed by Robson (1989). The reliability (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient) and validity (content validity) of the questionnaires were ensured. The collected data was analyzed based on a correlation analysis and structural equation modeling using SPSS 24.0 and Amos 8. The obtained results revealed that there is a significant structural relationship between well-being and self-concept with the mediation of gender and experience. However, there is no significant structural relationship between well-being and professional development with the mediation of gender and experience. The findings of this study have important theoretical for teachers, school psychologists, teacher educators, curriculum designers and researchers.