Modeling the Interplay of Indonesian and Iranian EFL Teachers’ Apprehension, Resilience, Organizational Mattering, and Psychological Well-being

Following the tenets of positive psychology, many researchers have explored the realm of teachers’ emotions in the past decades. However, the number of studies observing teachers’ psycho-emotional factors from a cross-cultural lens has been negligible. To fill this gap, This study examined the association among apprehension, resilience, organizational mattering, and psychological well-being of 411 Indonesian and 285 Iranian English language teachers. The structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses of the data obtained from four questionnaires indicated that while the language teachers’ apprehension was weakly correlated with the other factors, the other variables were strongly correlated. Furthermore, the results showed that resilience and organizational mattering were strong predictors of teachers’ overall well-being. The cross-cultural comparison of the results revealed that the Indonesian teachers enjoyed more resilience and seemed to cope better with challenging and apprehensive situations. Identifying and regulating negative emotions, like apprehension, can potentially pave the way for policymakers and teacher educators to empower teachers to survive and thrive in the stressful conditions of their profession.