Bifurcating and balancing: Language teachers' emotion regulation motives and professional identity construction in cross-cultural contexts

This study investigated language teachers' emotion regulation motives (ERMs) and their identity construction in cross-cultural contexts. Drawing upon qualitative data about eight Chinese as a second language teachers for international students through semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, and document collection, the study identified three overarching motives and six identities of language teachers: teacher as instructor and disciplinarian who regulated emotions for improving teaching effectiveness, teacher as caregiver and observer who regulated emotions for navigating teacher-student relationships, and teacher as mediator and defender who regulated emotions for reconciling cultural differences. These findings revealed the multifaceted, discipline-specific, and contradictory nature of language teachers' ERMs and reflected their balancing of sub-identities to construct their professional identities in cross-cultural contexts.