Cognitive and Emotional Resilience among English Language Teachers: Exploring Stress Management and Motivation in EMI Settings

Abstract

The growing phenomenon of English-medium instruction (EMI) in Gulf higher education has raised cognitive, emotional, and motivational stakes for English language teachers with limited systematic institutional support. Hence, it is pertinent to investigate how English language teachers are responding to these challenges. Despite the existing research on teacher stress and emotional labor, few empirical studies have explored intervention-based research among English language teachers in Gulf EMI settings. This study focused on the effect of a self-determination-oriented socio-academic intervention on the cognitive and emotional resilience, stress management, motivation, and speaking proficiency of English language teachers. Employing a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 64 university-level English language teachers in Saudi Arabia participated and were randomly distributed into experimental and control groups. An adapted speaking proficiency rubric and a cognitive and emotional stability scale were used to collect the data, which were then analyzed through independent-samples t-tests. The results revealed significant post-test differences in favor of the experimental group on all outcome variables. The results highlight the importance of autonomy-supportive institutional practices and structured professional support in EMI settings and provide a context-sensitive intervention framework that may serve similar educational settings. Future studies should explore the longitudinal impact of the intervention and test the intervention model in other EMI contexts.