Riding the happiness curve: the wellbeing of mid-career phase language teachers

ABSTRACT Mid-career teachers are often described as experienced and comfortable in their jobs with higher motivation and self-efficacy (Hargreaves 2005); yet, at the same time, the mid-career phase has also been portrayed as a period marked by a career plateau and feelings of stagnation (Farrell 2014). Despite the criticality of this career phase and the paradoxical research findings, mid-career teachers' lives have been rarely examined in-depth (Day and Gu 2010). This study employed semi-structured interviews with 16 mid-career foreign language teachers at secondary schools in the two different settings, Austria and England, to explore the characteristics of this career phase and the factors contributing to the wellbeing of these teachers. Inductive data analysis revealed that these mid-career language teachers benefitted from an established sense of confidence but also sought further professional growth opportunities. The teachers drew positivity and satisfaction from the meaning they took from their work, although their wellbeing appeared occasionally threatened by tensions between their job commitments and additional responsibilities in both personal and professional domains. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this under-researched population and indicate the kind of support such teachers would need to remain in the profession and thrive during this critical period.


Introduction
Teachers in the middle of their careers represent something of a paradox. They are often described as confident, established and competent given their experience and comfort in their professional roles (Hargreaves 2005). However, at the same time, during this career phase, teachers are often found to re-evaluate their career choices, priorities, and commitments, which can impact on their future career pathways (Emslie and Hunt 2009). While some mid-career teachers may remain engaged with a high sense of professional efficacy, others may feel disenchantment with their jobs and anxious about what comes next in their personal and professional lives (Day and Gu 2010;Hart 2016). Despite the unique tensions that characterise this career phase, the mid-career phase has rarely been explored in-depth (Maddox-Daines 2016), and research focusing on language teachers at this career stage is especially scarce (Farrell 2014).
In this paper, we seek to gain a holistic picture of language teachers in the mid-career phase as part of a larger research project that investigates the wellbeing of foreign language teachers in Austria and England across the career span. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 mid-career foreign language teachers at secondary school level (Austria = 9; England = 7), we examine the factors contributing to the wellbeing of these educators during this career phase in two distinct settings. The insights from this study can not only generate ideas of how to support mid-career teachers during this critical period, but also provides valuable insights into career development trajectories and lessons for earlier career phases in terms of sustained professional motivation and job satisfaction.

Defining mid-career teachers
The middle years of people's professional careers have been described as a phase marked by crucial life transitions (Maddox-Daines 2016). Typically, individuals re-evaluate their expectations, commitments and needs, and seek out opportunities for future development or redirection (Williams and Fox 1995). It is also a phase of juggling priorities and re-negotiating one's work-life balance (Emslie and Hunt 2009), while striving for intellectual satisfaction and authenticity (Maddox-Daines 2016).
Most research on teacher wellbeing to date has focused on the pre-service and early-career phases due to the high rates of teacher attrition within the first 5 years in the profession (Ingersoll 2012). As such, less attention has been paid to mid-career teachers as a specific population (Day and Gu 2010;Farrell 2014). Another reason underlying this paucity of research could be a lack of consensus in terms of what 'mid-career' entails (Day and Gu 2010). Nias (2002) defines midcareer teachers as those between the ages of 32-42, and with 12-20 years of teaching experience. Hargreaves (2005) categorises teachers with 6-19 years of experience as being in their mid-career phase. In our study, we draw on and adapt Day and Gu's (2010) framework and thus refer to midcareer teachers as those with 8-23 years of teaching experience. This framework has strong validity given its origins in empirical data, and its comprehensiveness. They distinguished mid-career teachers with 8-15 years of experience and 16-23 years of experience as they have found a 'watershed' in the 8-15 years phase where work-life tensions were more likely to affect these teachers' sense of commitment and resilience. In contrast, teachers with 16-23 years of experience enjoyed higher levels of commitment, motivation, and self-efficacy. However, in the present study, the distinction was not drawn because differences between the two groups did not emerge during the data analysis.

Challenges and needs of mid-career teachers
The mid-career phase is considered as a pivotal moment in a teacher's career trajectory (Fessler 1995). As such, this period has been defined as a crossroad or transitional period (Day, Sammons, and Stobart 2007), where teachers contemplate their career choices, reflect on their priorities and commitments, and decide upon the direction of their futures (Huberman 1993). Hargreaves (2005: 979) depicts mid-career teachers as 'typically more relaxed, experienced and comfortable about their job […], but still enthusiastic and flexible enough to respond to change in a broadly positive way'. He considers them as more resilient and less likely to experience feelings of frustration compared to early-career teachers. In a similar vein, research by Ingersoll (2012) has revealed that, after the first five years in the profession, teachers tend to develop higher motivation and selfefficacy.
While the picture of mid-career teachers drawn by Hargreaves (2005) is mostly positive, other studies have described the mid-career phase as a phase of increasing challenges and tensions (Day and Gu 2010;Huberman 1995). Most researchers agree that this phase is marked by a quest for experimentation and diversification, where teachers seek opportunities for professional development, and added responsibility (e.g. Fessler 1995;Ponnock, Torsney, and Lombardi 2018). When given appropriate support and recognition from school leaders and colleagues, mid-career teachers are more likely to 'continue to pursue a professional life path in which they develop and deepen their capacity to teach to their best' (Gu 2017: 44). However, when their needs for professional growth and development are not met nor supported, mid-career teachers may begin to feel 'the stale breath of routine' (Huberman 1995: 43) and experience a decline in their motivation and commitment (Gu 2017). They can become more vulnerable to the fear of career stagnation and experience a phenomenon known as 'plateauing' (Milstein 1990), which is characterised by feelings of sameness, disenchantment, and disillusionment (Farrell 2014). Ultimately, in the face of a lack of clear pathways and support for career progression, they may decide to permanently leave the profession, since they still have time to do so (Huberman 1995). Indeed, in Cawte's (2020) study on midcareer attrition and retention, factors related to career progression, work-related stress and exhaustion, and organisational culture were mentioned by participants as key reasons that prompted them to abandon the profession.
Another source of pressure for mid-career teachers concerns the need to manage the tensions between their personal and professional domains. Indeed, the mid-career phase is typically characterised by growing commitments and responsibilities within and beyond the classroom (Emslie and Hunt 2009). These teachers are often expected to engage in additional duties at work, such as leadership and administrative responsibilities (Baldwin et al. 2008), while possibly having increased family commitment due to the needs of children or aging parents (Cawte 2020).
As such, balancing the personal and professional spheres appears key to preserving one's resilience and commitment at this stage (Day and Gu 2010). Findings from Day and Gu's (2010) study revealed that key factors supporting the commitment and resilience of these teachers were their relationship with students, positive student behaviour, opportunities for Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and support from leadership and colleagues. The researchers concluded that the support received during the mid-career phase is critically important, since it 'is likely to influence their commitment and their capacities to teach to their best in the next 10-20 years of their work in schools' (Day and Gu 2010: 99).
While several studies have examined the challenges and wellbeing of language teachers at any career stage, including mid-career phase (e.g. Jones and Gordon 2019; MacIntyre et al. 2019), research focusing specifically on mid-career language teachers and their wellbeing remain scarce. Farrell's (2014: 512-513) interview study involving three mid-career English as a second language (ESL) teachers revealed that an important source of frustration for these teachers was the administration's lack of recognition of 'the unique duties and roles the ESL teachers play within the institution'. This prompted feelings of self-doubt and negativity among the participants, which made them reconsider their practices, as well as their future pathways in the profession, leading to a career plateau. Another factor contributing to a sense of stagnation was a lack of opportunities for career advancement (Farrell 2014). In contrast, factors such as collaborating with colleagues, feelings of self-efficacy, and opportunities for professional development were reported by participants as helping them overcome a sense of stagnation.
In sum, the literature suggests that mid-career is a defining period of time for educators that can be marked potentially by a career plateau and feelings of stagnation but can also be characterised by an active seeking out of new challenges and opportunities for career growth. In particular, the lack of recognition and support from the school administration and of opportunities for career advancement were found as contributing towards a sense of stagnation for mid-career language teachers (Farrell 2014). It is also a time where personal commitments such as caring for children or elders and the normal processes of maturation and aging lead to changes in priorities in the work/life balance (Hendry and Kloep 2001). In this study, we aim to holistically examine the unique characteristics of 16 language teachers in the mid-career phase, in order to add further detail to a comprehensive picture of this under-researched teaching population, specifically in the context of language education.

Research questions and aims
The aim of this study is to explore salient factors perceived as affecting the wellbeing of 16 midcareer teachers in two diverse contexts, Austria and England. These two locations were chosen due to the different social and cultural contexts of foreign language teaching in each setting. In Austria, English is a core compulsory school subject in secondary schools, and it therefore enjoys a high status (Dalton-Puffer et al. 1997). In contrast, in England, modern foreign languages (MFLs) are not mandatory for all levels of secondary schools and are not part of the core curriculum at Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16). Indeed, previous studies on motivation in learning MFLs have shown that students in England appear to be poorly motivated (e.g. Coleman, Galaczi, and Astruc 2007;Lanvers 2017) with MFLs suffering comparatively low status in schooling contexts (British Council 2019;Coleman, Galaczi, and Astruc 2007). However, it must be noted that the situation appears to vary across specific MFLs. German, for example, suffers a greater decrease in student numbers compared to French and Spanish (Tinsley and Board 2017).
This study will answer the following research questions: RQ1: What characterises the mid-career professional phase of foreign language teachers in Austria (AT) and England (EN)?
RQ2: What personal and contextual factors appear to contribute to the wellbeing of mid-career foreign language teachers in Austria and England?

Context and participants
In this study, 16 mid-career foreign language teachers (AT = 9; EN = 7) teaching in secondary schools volunteered to take part in semi-structured interviews. All participants were recruited through a call for participants through departmental mailing lists, websites, social media, and personal social networks of the research team. All of the nine Austrian participants in this study were teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), plus at least one other subject, as is normal in Austrian secondary schools. In England, all seven teachers taught MFLs; three teachers also taught other subjects, such as mathematics and social studies. Given the different systemic and contextual conditions of teaching languages in each country, it was expected that the diverse contexts might reveal contextual factors impacting on the educators' sense of wellbeing. Detailed background data about the participants are shown in Table 1 below.

Research tools and procedures
To collect data, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews, which allowed for a more conversational style of interviewing and enabled us to compare data across participants (O'Leary 2021). In the interviews, teachers were asked about their career trajectory, current teaching situation, sources of stress and strengths, teacher identity and meaning, perceptions of their working environments, and future goals as teachers. All interviews were conducted in English between December 2018 and May 2019. Eight participants in Austria were interviewed face-to-face, one teacher was interviewed via Skype. All participants based in England were interviewed via Skype. The interviews lasted between 45 and 105 minutes and generated a corpus of 144, 996 words. Before the interviews took place, participants were asked to fill in a short online biodata questionnaire, which helped to contextualise their responses and to learn more about participants' demographics. The questionnaire also included the PERMA measurement of wellbeing (Butler and Kern 2016), and it is presented on a scale of 1-10 in Table 1. PERMA is a model of wellbeing comprising five components: Positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (Seligman 2011). All the participants' overall PERMA scores ranged between 6.69 and 8.81; thus, the 16 participants seemed overall to rate their wellbeing positively. This paper focuses on the qualitative data derived from the interviews; however, we provide the wellbeing scores to offer further background detail to their responses and discussion, especially in respect to their own wellbeing.

Ethics
In this study, we followed the ethical guidelines proposed by the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL 2016). Before data were collected, we obtained ethical permission from the Committee for Research Ethics Concerning Human Subjects of a partner university of the research team.
Participants were given a participant information sheet, which included information about the project, storage of data, their rights and involvement, and the option of withdrawing from the study, and asked to sign a consent form if willing to take part in the research. Pseudonyms were assigned to each participant, and we also ensured that any identifying markers were removed during transcription to guarantee complete anonymity of our participants. Following transcription, the original recordings were destroyed.

Data analysis
All members of the research team carefully read through the transcribed interviews to familiarise themselves with the data. In the following stage, memos were created, which were discussed in a team meeting. Interview transcripts were put into Atlas.ti (a data management software) for the coding process. Four researchers then conducted inductive line-by-line coding, taking a grounded perspective (Charmaz 2006). After the first wave of coding, the whole team met to discuss, compare, and refine the initial set of 69 codes, which resulted in a final list of 34 codes, including, for example, growth mindset, work-life balance, stressors, and additional responsibilities. During the second wave of coding, codes were compared and further refined, and memos and quotes within each code were examined in detail collaboratively. Preliminary categories were identified, which were then discussed and refined by the whole research team. This process resulted in three final core themes, which characterised the wellbeing of the participants and included: Maturation and confidence, personal growth and legacy, and juggling responsibilities.

Findings
The findings are organised around the three main themes which emerged from the analysis and reflect the issues defining the wellbeing of the mid-career teachers (AT = 9; EN = 7) in this study.

Maturation and confidence: experience gives perspective
The data revealed that all the teachers in this study reported having learned important lessons from their personal and professional experiences across their careers. As a result, they felt more confident over time and more comfortable in their professional roles. For example, Alexandra (AT) explained that, at the beginning of her career, she experienced challenges in dealing with students' behaviour. Over time, she gained experience and her classroom management improved leading to fewer discipline issues and less related stress. In addition, seven teachers (AT = 4; EN = 3) mentioned that, as they look back at the beginning of their careers, they realised that they used to spend too much time preparing their lessons. Rachel (EN) reported that she had often stayed up until midnight to prepare lessons at the beginning of her teaching career, but over time, she found a more realistic and manageable way to plan lessons and use her time more efficiently. The findings also revealed how 10 teachers' (AT = 7; EN = 3) attitudes shifted compared to their early years of teaching, becoming more tolerant and setting more reasonable goals and levels of expectations for themselves. Simon (AT), Mia (AT), and Monika (AT) reported that the way they perceive mistakes changed positively as they gained experience. Cora (AT), Elena (AT) and Alison (EN) developed more realistic expectations concerning classroom outcomes. Alison (EN) said that she used to take more risks in her lessons and added, 'I am very aware of the exams and the results.
[…] Now I am very focused on getting the students through the exam'. Cora (AT) explained that she used to cry if her lessons 'didn't work at all. […] Now it seems, either you get used to such situations or you handle them'. In another example, Ellie (EN) mentioned that her attitude towards her colleagues' negative comments have changed since she started teaching explaining she is now more open to feedback and less sensitive about critical feedback. Finally, Alison (EN) reported that becoming a parent had also changed her feelings towards her students: 'I think I was a good teacher before in some ways, but it personalised every child after having children myself, […] It made me care more about every individual'.
Furthermore, 13 participants (AT = 8; EN = 5) reported feeling quite confident in their professional roles, while 11 teachers (AT = 7; EN = 4) openly expressed that their confidence grew with their experience. For example, Simon (AT) felt that he became more confident over the 10 years working in one school as he got to learn and understand how the system works. In another example, Elena (AT) explained that she does not worry anymore about conflicts with parents or a headteacher because of her growing confidence in her work. Similarly, Keira (EN) reported that she became comfortable in taking criticism and often sought her colleagues' feedback.
Interestingly, while it is known that linguistic anxiety can be an issue for foreign language teachers (Horwitz 1996), none of the teachers in this study reported language anxiety; rather, five teachers (AT = 2; EN = 3) highlighted their language confidence. In particular, Claudia (AT), who was teaching Italian and English, said: 'I can just step into the classroom and do any lesson to any topic without preparation. […] I know a lot of vocabulary in Italian, so I'm very, very confident'. Similarly, Theresa (AT) scaled her confidence as 9 out of 10, and Rose (EN) mentioned her confidence in teaching stemmed from her high level of foreign language proficiency, along with teaching techniques gained from working in different countries. The data shows that all the participants perceived themselves as competent teachers as a result of their many years of teaching experience.

Growth mindset and legacy
The analysis also revealed that all the mid-career teachers in this study displayed a strong willingness to continue to learn, grow, and move forward in their careers. In particular, Ellie (EN) reported on her love for learning, 'That's the best thing about the job', and Monika (AT) appreciated the constant 'development backstage' that, in her opinion, characterises teaching. Five other teachers (AT = 2; EN = 3) reported actively seeking challenges in their professional lives. Keira (EN) explained that she will be teaching a higher level of German and said, 'I am looking forward to the challenge'. Quirina (AT) described that challenges are the opportunity for her self-development.
Four teachers in England mentioned that they felt languages had become less valued due to government policies, and two participants particularly reported taking proactive action against this. For example, Alison (EN) said that she joined a teacher union to campaign on reducing workload for teachers and budget cuts to education. Similarly, Casey (EN) joined an association for language teachers to pressure the government about the grading system for A-level and languages as non-compulsory subjects. It has to be noted that five out of seven teachers in England were teaching German as a main subject. German entries have been declined the most in the last two decades in England (Tinsley and Board 2017); thus, this could be a particular reason why these four teachers felt modern foreign languages are generally less valued. This aspect was the core contextual difference emerging from the data with regard to the challenges experienced by our participants.
Another factor contributing to professional satisfaction was a passion for learning languages (Phelps and Benson 2012), as reported by five teachers (AT = 1; EN = 4). For example, Mara (EN) said, 'my ambition would be to give them [students] a bit of my love for languages. Languages and other cultures open their [students'] minds'. Rachel (EN) also highlighted her passion for languages and Simon (AT) explained that he does not care about his workload because he likes his subjects and the languages so much.
All participants also reported on the satisfaction gained from witnessing their students' learning, improvement, and their role played in it. They described a sense of meaning that arose from seeing their students' development over the years because they felt that they are influencing their lives positively and that they are leaving a legacy behind. For example, Elena (AT) explained: 'At the end of these four years, it's sometimes nice how they developed, and that's a good thing'.
Similarly, four of the teachers (AT = 2; EN = 2) mentioned gaining a sense of meaning from the extracurricular trips that they take their students on to foreign countries to teach them about different cultures and, in this way, broaden their horizons. In particular, Alison (EN) said, 'I love the experience of introducing children to cultural elements […] I find that very exciting'. These kinds of excursions are typical in language teaching, and it is interesting to note the specific satisfaction they give to those who organise them.
In sum, over time, these teachers gain positivity from their own growth and learning as well as seeing this in their learners and knowing that they have been able to support and help their students' development.

Juggling responsibilities
Thirteen teachers (AT = 7; EN = 6) in this study were dealing with additional responsibilities at work. For example, Casey (EN) mentioned that, alongside teaching German and social studies, she was also a teacher trainer, mentor, and tutor in her school. Similarly, Mara (EN) was teaching German and French, and her responsibilities also included being a teacher trainer, doing observations, running trips, and participating in curriculum writing. In addition, Alexandra (AT) was a team leader for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers in her school, and Simon (AT) and Monika (AT) were also head teachers.
While five participants (AT = 3; EN = 2) perceived these additional responsibilities as very stressful, the other eight participants (AT = 4; EN = 4) reported these as simultaneously sources of stress and also positivity. For example, in addition to her regular teaching, Quirina (AT) reported being responsible for organising conferences at her school, which she found most stressful. Monika (AT) explained that being a head teacher contributed to her workload and stress, but it also brought positivity as she was proud of herself for managing that additional responsibility. Similarly, Rachel (EN) mentioned that she enjoyed being the head of department and wanted to stay at a management position even though this job added to her workload. Teachers who value additional responsibilities may suffer less from stress caused by workload, even when the workload increases (Kyriacou 2001).
Almost all the teachers in the study (AT = 8; EN = 7) reported having domestic obligations often colliding with their work. Juggling personal and professional responsibilities appeared to create additional stress for these teachers at this point in their careers. Eleven participants (AT = 5; EN = 6) mentioned that they needed to take care of their young children alongside their work commitments. For example, Alison (EN) explained that her obligations at work keep piling up to the point that she had very little time for her children, which was emotionally distressing. Similarly, Rose (EN) reported that she sacrificed her ambitions to pursue a PhD because she needed to prioritise her family. Five participants (AT = 4; EN = 1) either did not have children or, if they had them, they were already grown up. Mia (AT) reported when her children were small, she found it quite difficult and stressful to manage her work and home obligations, but as they were getting older, she could now devote more time to her job and herself. It is evident from these data that the juggling of personal responsibilities alongside professional roles and a period of growing additional commitments, meant there was a considerable amount of stress as the teachers sought to balance these diverse aspects.
Nevertheless, the majority of these mid-career teachers (AT = 7; EN = 4) reported on feeling quite satisfied with their jobs on the whole, which is perhaps reflected also in their overall wellbeing scores (see Table 1). Monika (AT) explained that she was content with everything that she had accomplished to date and that her current career phase was 'the best time so far' for her. Rose (EN) was happy with the amount of autonomy she had in her school as an experienced teacher. Mara (EN) described her satisfaction in the current career phase and said, 'I've become more experienced and more confident. I've quite enjoyed the training side of it'. Alexandra (AT) also reported that she was content with the present and said, 'I've found a way of teaching, behaving, treating pupils, and engaging with pupils that I'm happy with'. Thus, during this career phase, it appears that for many a certain sense of accomplishment, familiarity, and stability serves to create a positive sense of job satisfaction, despite the challenges this career phase poses in terms of multiple and potentially conflicting personal and professional commitments.

Discussion
This study has examined the wellbeing of mid-career language teachers in Austria and England. The analysis has shown that the wellbeing of these particular mid-career teachers is marked by confidence and a perspective of growth. They all reported feeling confident in their professional roles with no mention of any concerns about self-efficacy regarding their language proficiency or any other aspect of their professional competence repertoire. It has been shown that self-efficacy can positively influence teachers' sense of wellbeing (Zee and Koomen 2016). As such, the findings suggest that these professionals have developed healthy psychological resources in the form of an assuredness and authentic confidence in their abilities as language teachers to draw on during this specific period of their professional and personal lives. Another positive benefit of high selfefficacy is that when people are more confident in their professional roles, they are more likely to engage in professional development, take calculated risks for growth, and be willing to experiment more in their teaching (Bandura 1997;Hoy and Spero 2005).
In line with greater confidence, all of these teachers indicated a growth mindset towards their professional wellbeing. This positive attitude to learning is also likely to serve as another valuable psychological resource for teachers to draw on and gain strength from (Yeager and Dweck 2012). Holding a growth mindset professionally is likely to trigger a cycle of positivity as teachers with a growth mindset tend to enjoy more confidence and also be willing to engage in CPD which in turn can improve their teaching (Dweck 2014). Hence, learners are more likely to enjoy their classes, be more engaged and ultimately more successful, which in turn provides another positive source of meaning for the teachers as reported in this study's findings and elsewhere (Frenzel et al. 2009;Lavy and Bocker 2018). There remains very little work on teacher mindsets about their own pedagogical and didactic competences generally and in language education specifically (for exceptions, see, Haukås and Mercer 2021;Irie, Ryan, and Mercer 2018); however, the little research available has shown that enhancing teacher mindsets could be another way of strengthening the psychological resources teachers can draw on for wellbeing in their professional lives (Haukås and Mercer 2021).
A final source of positivity for these teachers stems from the meaning they take from their work with their learners. In the PERMA model of wellbeing (Seligman 2011), two of the five key pillars are a sense of meaning (M) and sense of accomplishment (A). In these data, a majority of the teachers reported how important it was for them to see their students proceed and succeed to gain a sense of accomplishment and their students' success also provided meaning to their professional work. As shown in previous research by Jones and Gordon (2019), introducing students to different cultures by taking them on extracurricular trips can contribute to language teachers' sense of meaning and job satisfaction. Indeed, this mirrors other work by Brady and Wilson (2021) who also found that teacher wellbeing was strengthened by a sense of meaning stemming from contributing to student development.
Perhaps the most notable challenge threatening the wellbeing of these educators stemmed from the tensions between additional commitments in work and their personal lives and their regular work responsibilities. Essentially, teachers in this career and life phase are in demand and are being pulled in multiple directions; all of which can take its toll on their wellbeing (Brady and Wilson 2021). A study by Manuel, Carter, and Dutton (2018) shows the strains of juggling multiple demands and feeling stretched too thinly in diverse directions. Thus, although these educators had positive psychological resources to draw strength from (self-efficacy, growth mindset, and a sense of meaning), the reality of their life circumstances and professional commitments also threatened their wellbeing. An important lesson from these data for school leaders is to recognise that educators in this career phase have many strengths to draw on and they have much to contribute to school life (Lusty 2013), but they should not be over-stretched or exploited, and they require explicit support. In other words, if educators take on additional diverse commitments, this should be accommodated professionally such as through extra time to cope with multiple tasks and demands and reduced commitments elsewhere to maintain balance. In addition, leadership should seek to offer maximum flexibility for those dealing with additional home responsibilities to alleviate some of the strain of juggling diverse commitments that can pull an individual in opposing and conflicting directions, creating a considerable source of stress (Beigi, Shirmohammadi, and Stewart 2018).
In sum, it is perhaps surprising how homogenous these data were across the teachers and contexts. The findings appear to imply that the individuals are coping by drawing on personal and psychological resources to manage their wellbeing, and that the professional contexts (Austria/ England, respective institutions) are playing less of a defining role at this phase in their wellbeing or they may simply have grown accustomed to their settings and be less consciously aware of their impact. That said, the role of government policies and the status assigned to teaching certain languages was apparent for some of the teachers in England, especially those teaching German which is a language in decline (Tinsley and Board 2017). Furthermore, challenges that language teachers often face, such as language anxiety and unstable job contracts (Mercer 2021), did not emerge as factors influencing the wellbeing of mid-career language teachers in this study. As seen earlier, none of the participants specifically mentioned having experienced language anxiety in the classroom; instead, they referred to their language confidence in positive terms. This might be because of their accumulated teaching experience over years, which have boosted their confidence in their jobs. In addition, three teachers (AT = 2; EN = 1) reported on a positive sense of stability as they had permanent work contracts at this point in their careers. Nevertheless, two teachers in Austria had temporary contracts but still reported not being concerned by this as they were confident about finding other teaching positions. This could again stem from the fact that English as a foreign language is a core subject in the Austrian school-leaving exam meaning teachers of this subject typically enjoy higher status and are required in all schools teaching to this level.
It must also be noted that all these individuals were volunteers who generally reported positive wellbeing as can also be seen in the relatively high wellbeing scores. The study may not be capturing the full range of experiences of educators at this career phase such as those who are struggling and for whom potentially contextual conditions are more defining. An especially striking characteristic of these findings is how they resonate with other studies of this population conducted in different contexts and for different subject combinations (see, e.g. Hargreaves 2005;Ponnock, Torsney, and Lombardi 2018). We conclude that this may serve as indication of the robustness of the findings about what characterises the wellbeing of teachers during this career phase. That said, questions remain about the role of psychological resources in balance with social and contextual challenges and demands. When the challenges and demands are greater than resources the individuals can draw on, wellbeing is threatened (Bakker and Demerouti 2007); thus, drawing on psychological resources, such as self-efficacy and a sense of meaning, may serve to counter social and contextual challenges. Further research would also be needed to understand how this career phase is impacted by previous experiences such as through life history research (Goodson and Choi 2008) and retrodictive qualitative modelling (Dörnyei 2014), but also to appreciate how this career phase can influence the subsequent remaining years in the profession.

Conclusion and implications
In this study, we have examined the wellbeing of mid-career language teachers and the unique characteristics of this career phase. The findings suggest that the language teachers in this career phase benefitted from an established sense of confidence which they had built through experience in their career and which generated positive self-efficacy. Institutions could show their trust in these experienced teachers by providing increased autonomy and a greater recognition of their expertise. These teachers also actively sought out opportunities for professional growth with a positive attitude to further learning. This reinforces the importance of providing varied opportunities for CPD, especially in this career phase, to prevent teachers from experiencing career stagnation and boosting professional motivation and growth. The data also show how these teachers draw positivity and satisfaction from the meaning they take from their work, although their wellbeing was potentially threatened by tensions between their regular job commitments and additional responsibilities of both personal and professional nature. This 'balancing' of resources against challenges is one way of understanding and conceptualising the dynamics of wellbeing (Dodge et al. 2012). Although these mid-career language teachers had considerable psychological resources to draw on, the lack of explicit reference to social and institutional resources of support is a cause for some concern. Institutions should not be leaving these valuable experienced teachers to their own devices to sink or swim in terms of wellbeing and professional job satisfaction, but they should be explicitly seeking out ways to offer concrete support initiatives to ensure these teachers not only thrive during this time, but they also feel empowered to choose a pathway of positive longterm retention to remain within the profession.

Declarations of interest
None.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).