A Cross-Cultural Scrutiny of Predictors of English Teachers’ Immunity in the Contexts of Iran, France, and the United States

Recent research on language teacher factors has focused on the construct of teacher immunity. This construct was introduced into the field of language teaching to delineate language teachers’ psychological state. Productive teacher immunity is defined as language teachers’ psychological shield that safeguards them against diverse stress-inducing factors. Nonetheless, maladaptive teacher immunity refers to the psychological barrier that turns teachers into cynical individuals who oppose innovative approaches and ideas. This study aimed to determine the extent to which English teachers’ affective factors including their teaching enjoyment, psychological well-being at work, emotion regulation, teacher reflection, work engagement, and self-compassion predicted their productive and maladaptive types of teacher immunity in the contexts of Iran, France, and the United States. To this end, the researchers selected 319 Iranian, 391 French, and 545 American English teachers in different cities in the aforementioned contexts using convenience sampling. Moreover, they used seven reliable and valid questionnaires to examine these teachers’ affective factors. Lastly, they utilized Binary Logistic Regression and Chi-Square tests to analyze the data. The results indicated that similar factors including emotion regulation and teacher reflection significantly predicted French and American teachers’ teacher immunity. Nonetheless, Iranian teachers’ teacher immunity was significantly predicted by a different set of factors including their teaching enjoyment, psychological well-being at work, and work engagement. Furthermore, French and American teachers’ teacher immunity was more productive than that of Iranian teachers. The results may provide guidelines on the development of teacher-factor-informed education courses for English teachers in both second and foreign language contexts.