Navigating the Emotional Landscape of an ESP Lecturer: Stories of Vulnerability and Resilience in the Implementation of a Digital Genre

Abstract

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following chapter: Diert-Boté, I. & Moncada-Comas, B., Navigating the emotional landscape of an ESP lecturer: Stories of vulnerability and resilience in the implementation of a digital genre, published in Emotional vulnerability of language teachers in digital settings, edited by M. Nazari (ed.), I. Xodabande & S. Karimpour, 2026, Springer. This version of the manuscript has been accepted for publication, after final editorial and peer review is complete, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements (such as copyediting or typesetting), or any corrections. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-3159-2. Use of this Accepted Manuscript version is subject to the publisher’s Accepted Manuscript terms of use: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/accepted-manuscript-terms.

Teacher emotional vulnerability refers to the noticeable gap between what teachers expect to feel and what they actually feel (Zembylas, 2002). A context in which teachers may feel this emotional state is a digital scenario, since it threatens their perceived safe teaching practices (Gao, 2008). This study explores the emotional experience of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) lecturer regarding her implementation of a genre in a digital setting (Blogger) by analyzing interview data through small stories (Georgakopoulou, 2006). It examines how explicit and implicit emotions in her narrative reveal the lecturer’s emotional landscape when implementing a digital genre and considers the lecturer’s position within the vulnerability-resilience continuum. The findings reveal variations in the teacher’s emotional vulnerability, highlighting the dynamism and complexity of teachers’ emotional landscape. The discrepancy between the lecturer’s expected and actual emotional experiences appears to lead to feelings of vulnerability, intrinsically related to contextual factors of the blog virtual scenario (students’ engagement, technical issues and teacher’s expertise). However, the lecturer also displays a resilient mindset by using coping mechanisms that are helpful to maintain her emotional wellbeing. Overall, the paper demonstrates how feelings of vulnerability can influence teaching practices by showing that, due to the emotional struggles associated with implementing a digital genre, the teacher abandoned the digital tool and reverted to a more traditional setting.

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities [MICIU, grant number PID2022-137554NB-100]; and the Agency for Management of University and Research Grants, AGAUR [AGAUR, grant number 2021 SGR 01295].