Teaching is a challenging and labor-intensive occupation due to its service-providing basis and accountability pressures (Mercer, 2020). That is why in language education which is full of challenges, teachers are considered as the precursor stakeholders (Nayernia and Babayan, 2019). In contrast to many other professions, second/foreign language teachers’ duty continues even after the class as they need to offer useful homework assignments, give feedbacks, and carry out assessments. In English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, this pressure is multiplied because teachers usually face adversities caused by different sources, such as linguistic difficulties, (inter)cultural disparities, and instructional issues (King and Ng, 2018). This buttresses the claim that teachers are the “pillars” and “architects” of societies (Pishghadam et al., 2019, 2021). Therefore, knowing the teachers’ emotions and expectations is of utmost importance in academia. Aside from instruction and learning issues, teachers carry their own value systems, beliefs, mentalities, and behaviors to the class which can be indirectly inculcated in the learners (Haseli Songhori et al., 2018; Derakhshan et al., 2020). This justified the need for a paradigm shift from “learner psychology” to “teacher psychology” in which teachers’ emotions are the priority. To cause learning, teachers’ emotions, needs, and stressors must be identified and analyzed meticulously as the whole functionality of a teacher depends on the value and care given to him/her in an institution (Derakhshan et al., 2019).

Another critical issue in EFL contexts is the need for teachers to become resilient in the face of setbacks (Parsi, 2019). As pinpointed by Hong (2012), one of the best ways to minimize the job quitting rate of EFL teachers is raising their resiliency through appropriate strategies. The concept of resilience refers to one’s capability to recover and bounce back when he/she is encountered with adversities (Bernshausen and Cunningham, 2001). In other words, it is the ability to adapt with tough situations and improve one’s competence/skill when facing tensions and traumatic experiences (Bobek, 2002). It is a psychological construct in education which can considerably affect teachers and learners (Gu and Day, 2013). It is determined by many factors and influences teachers’ attitude, practices, commitment, sense of efficacy, identity, retention, satisfaction, and academic performance (Razmjoo and Ayoobiyan, 2019; Fathi and Saeedian, 2020). Teacher resilience is best illuminated in the positive psychology (PP) trend which highlights how people can thrive and have happier lives (MacIntyre et al., 2019). Instead of negative sides of teaching, PP urges the practitioners to focus on the power of positive emotions like joy, interest, passion, resilience, optimism, and the like to prevent the negative stressors. A resilient teacher, based on this conceptualization, is one who does not fringe when facing tough moments, responds positively to adverse experiences, has more satisfaction with his/her job, has more agency, has a sense of pride and accomplishment, and is competent (Howard and Johnson, 2004).

Furthermore, in an approval of the challenges inherent in ESL/EFL contexts, scholars have proposed a new cognate term for resilience called “academic buoyancy” which refers to the ability to manage the common challenges and adversities of educational life efficiently (Comerford et al., 2015). To put it simply, it is one’s capability to endure and overcome the challenges, stressors, and setbacks in his/her instructional career (Verrier et al., 2018). Buoyancy, like other constructs, is affected by both internal and external factors. Internal factors, such as self-efficacy, self-confidence, motivation, and agency, can influence one’s academic buoyancy. Conversely, socio-cultural contexts, educational milieus, and stakeholders as external forces can also determine one’s academic buoyancy (Comerford et al., 2015). Like resilience, the concept of academic buoyancy has its roots in PP and takes a proactive approach to cope with challenges and adversities in academia. Rather than focusing on negative sides and stressors, academic buoyancy considers one’s emotions, capacities, and strengths to increase his/her wellbeing and psychological development (Jahedizadeh et al., 2019). In other words, it can be asserted that academic buoyancy is a positive form of resilience that highlights one’s degree of endurance in the face of minor academic challenges. Academic buoyancy has been identified to affect various aspects of the teaching-learning cycle, like students’ achievement, motivation, self-efficacy, self-esteem, classroom enjoyment, self-regulation strategies, lowering stress and anxiety, increasing class participation, test performance, and so forth (Putwain et al., 2015; Yun et al., 2018).

These objectives are obtained only by a friendly and positive rapport between the teacher and students in the classroom. In a context full of adversities, teacher-students’ supportive relationships can function as a panacea and a driving force for improving students’ achievement and teachers’ performance (Irajzad and Shahriari, 2017). When teachers care about their pupils, they provide a reason for the students to invest their time in learning a subject. The whole education is about caring and showing the students that they are valued and considered (Ware, 2006). However, in reality, many students lose their motivation to learn as they feel that they are completely forgotten by their teachers. This sense of alienation damages teacher-students’ rapport and leads to a care crisis in academia (Schat, 2018). As research shows, teachers’ care provides different positive outcomes, such as higher student attendance, increased effort, higher achievement, higher motivation to learn, higher autonomy and agency, lower anxiety, and lower dropout rate (Bieg et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2018). Moreover, it is essential to note that the three constructs of teacher’s resilience, buoyancy, and care largely affect students’ engagement as well. Students’ engagement refers to their degree of involvement in the class during instructional activities which may continue for minutes (Skinner and Pitzer, 2012). Engagement is an explicit indicator of motivation and motivation theories which can considerably affect each other (Elliott and Tudge, 2012; Reeve, 2012). It is a dynamic construct upon which numerous internal and external factors exert influences (Guilloteaux, 2016). Students’ engagement has a significant role in language teaching and learning since the students who are engaged are usually energized, dedicated, attracted, effortful, and determined in the learning process (Abas, 2015; Guilloteaux, 2016).

The concept of engagement has different dimensions, including behavioral, emotional (affective), cognitive, agentic, academic, and social engagement (Reschly and Christenson, 2012; Oga-Baldwin, 2019). All of these components can be improved by teachers’ positive instructional practices (McKellar et al., 2020). Research indicates that students’ engagement strongly predicts different academic outcomes and is improvable through training (Eccles, 2016). More specifically, it has been identified to correlate with learners’ achievement, psychosocial adjustment, effective learning, and success (Chase et al., 2015; Jang et al., 2016). Moreover, as pinpointed by Quin (2017), the degree and quality of teacher-student rapport and the overall classroom climate directly influence students’ engagement. Thus, EFL teachers’ caring behaviors and being academically resilient and buoyant play a crucial role in creating engagement among their students.¹ When EFL teachers are tough in the face of adversities inherent in L2 education and show positive regards toward their students’ emotions and desires, the whole process of education succeeds. Motivated by this, the present review article aimed to go through studies conducted in this line of research, show the existing gaps, and offer future directions to avid researchers in EFL/ESL contexts.

Academic buoyancy has stemmed from PP which has put its emphasis on the role of emotions in education (Agudo, 2018). In academic contexts which are full of adversities, buoyancy refers to an individual’s ability to navigate and cope with the difficulties that occur (Martin and Marsh, 2019). It is a psychological construct which mirrors the routine academic setbacks in a positive context (Jahedizadeh et al., 2019). In L2 education, buoyancy beckons to the ability to negotiate and overcome the ups and downs of language learning and teaching (Yun et al., 2018). This construct can be affected by several factors internal and external to the individual. Internal factors include personality traits, like autonomy, motivation, self-efficacy, confidence, and self-esteem (Anderson et al., 2020). Oppositely, external factors refer to the contextual factors available in the educational environments which are crucial in shaping and developing interpersonal communication skills and academic buoyancy (Comerford et al., 2015).

There are some fundamental principles behind academic buoyancy, including (1) drawing on strengths rather than weaknesses, (2) taking proactive instead of reactive approaches to adversities and challenges, and (3) considering the “many” and the “healthy” cases rather than extreme ones in making propositions (Martin and Marsh, 2019). That is why, academic buoyancy is said to adapt the PP orientation and is the positive version of resilience.

In education, teacher-student rapport is one of the most important factors which causes many positive outcomes, such as developing interpersonal communication skills, intelligence, motivation, achievement, and confidence (Irajzad and Shahriari, 2017; Derakhshan et al., 2019). The concept of teacher care was first proposed by Rogers and Webb (1991) who described care as teachers’ behaviors and practices that foster the establishment of a strong, positive, and harmonious interpersonal relationship with their students. It involves forming a classroom atmosphere wherein both the students and the teacher simultaneously feel respected (Ware, 2006). Care also refers to an encouraging, trusting, and supportive relationship between teacher and students which can produce different positive outcomes, such as willingness to learn, having a sense of relatedness, higher attendance, increased learning investment, improved achievement, higher motivation, and lower anxiety (Bieg et al., 2013; Derakhshan et al., 2019).

Considering teacher care as a relational practice, Noddings (1992) introduced six domains for the concept of care, including caring for oneself, caring for close others, caring for faraway others, caring for non-individual life, caring for things, and caring for beliefs. Out of these, caring for oneself and caring for others are the most significant ones in educational arena (Derakhshan et al., 2019; Pishghadam et al., 2021). Moreover, Noddings (1992) maintained that caring relationships have three characteristics, namely, engrossment (accepting students’ feelings and experiences), commitment (equality of care), and motivational shift (shifting the focus from self to students as others). Despite its significance, care is still unclear and vague for many teachers who do not know what the indicators and ethics of a caring relationship are. Most of the time, teachers assume that they care for their students, while in reality a crisis and loss of care happen in many educational contexts (Schat, 2018). To tackle these, the understanding of care in education should permeate into teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and useful professional development courses are required for teachers to realize that care is not something assumed but a teachable construct.

Student engagement is one of the most critical issues in all educational systems which generates energy, investment, and success in academic contexts (Phillips, 2015). It is a buzzword which has caught the attention of many scholars over the past couple of decades due to its positive outcomes in L2 education (Eccles, 2016). As defined by Skinner and Pitzer (2012), engagement concerns the quality of students’ involvement in classroom activities which may last for a while. It is an overt sign of intrinsic motivation and the outcome of an interplay of different individual and contextual factors (Elliott and Tudge, 2012).

Owing to its significance, engagement has been conceptualized differently by different scholars, yet the most common conceptualization is that the concept is a multi-dimensional and a meta-construct which involves a range of dimensions. The dimensions are behavioral, emotional (or affective), cognitive, agentic, academic, and social (Reschly and Christenson, 2012). Behavioral engagement concerns students’ compliance and active involvement in the activities (e.g., paying attention, participation, listening, task involvement, asking questions, and doing the homework), while Emotional engagement refers to students’ internal states and their affective reactions in the learning process (e.g., students’ interest, enjoyment, having fun, happiness, boredom, and anxiety). Besides, cognitive engagement concerns students’ psychological investment in learning and using complex learning strategies during an activity. The next dimension is agentic engagement which is associated with students’ contribution to the enhancement of learning and teaching quality. Similarly, academic engagement concerns a student’s psychological and behavioral efforts and investment in learning and mastering knowledge and skills of an academic work (Fredricks et al., 2004). The final dimension here is social engagement which is related to students’ involvement in a variety of tasks which are intended to stimulate social interaction and problem-solving in students.

Perusing the literature on teachers’ resilience, buoyancy, and care and their impacts on students’ engagement, one can easily realize that ample empirical studies have been conducted though buoyancy and care need further explorations. Considering teachers’ resilience, many studies have approved its predictive power and positive outcomes, such as improved attitude, effective practices, higher commitment, higher level of efficacy, promoted identity, high retention, satisfaction, and academic performance. Additionally, Stavraki and Karagianni (2020) conducted a quantitative study on Greece EFL teachers’ resilience in light of their demographic, occupational, and school/class characteristics. Their results indicated that such variables did not affect the participants’ resilience level. Likewise, Rizqi (2017) ran a case study in Indonesia on the role of stress in shaping teachers’ resilience and found that teachers’ positive emotions, supportive relationships, and calm working environment reduce stress and help changing it to resilience. Similarly, Entesari et al. (2020) conducted a mixed-methods study on novice and experienced EFL teachers’ resiliency and identified that experienced teachers are more resilient and employ more coping strategies when they face adversities. Moreover, in China, Qiong et al., 2019 conducted a correlational study on work conditions and relational trust and teachers’ resilience and found that the quality of these variables can significantly predict teachers’ resilience.

Likewise, Shirazizadeh et al. (2019) examined the relationship among role stress, reflection, and resilience using questionnaires and an interview. The results revealed a significant positive relationship between reflection and resilience, while reflection and role stressors had a negative correlation. Trying to see the predictive power of resilience and creativity, Parsi (2019) collected quantitative data from 122 EFL teachers and identified that resilience significantly predicted their creativity.

As for academic buoyancy, research endorsed its positive impacts on learners’ improved academic achievement, motivation, self-efficacy, self-esteem, classroom enjoyment, self-regulation strategies, class participation, test performance, and lowering their stress and anxiety (Putwain et al., 2015; Yun et al., 2018). Moreover, Martin and Marsh (2019) investigated the relationship between buoyancy and adversity and if academic buoyancy protects students in the face of adversity. The results indicated that academic buoyancy significantly predicted the participants’ subsequent academic adversity. Furthermore, Jahedizadeh et al. (2019) explored buoyancy at higher education level in Iran and developed a scale to assess buoyancy in relation to GPA, gender, and educational level. In the end, they found that buoyancy has correlations with those factors and is able to improve sustainability among EFL students. Despite its significance, the concept of academic buoyancy has not received due attention from scholars in EFL/ESL contexts.

Care is another recent construct which has seen a burst of interest from scholars who highlight the criticality of a caring relationship between the teacher and the students. There is sufficient evidence that teachers’ care has a strong and positive relationship with student attendance, effort, achievement, motivation to learn, autonomy and agency, lower anxiety, and lower dropout ratio (Bieg et al., 2013; Pishghadam et al., 2015). Furthermore, Derakhshan et al. (2019) conducted a study on EFL teachers’ conception of intelligence, care, feedback, and stroke in Iran. They gathered their data from 200 EFL students and 30 EFL teachers through four scales but did not find a significant relationship between teachers’ conception of intelligence and care. Nevertheless, they identified a significant relationship between teachers’ conception of intelligence, feedback, and students’ stroke. Likewise, Kordi et al. (2012) examined the effect of teachers’ care on EFL students’ writing and found that students’ macro-level structures of writing had improved as a result of a caring relationship with their teacher. Additionally, Lavy and Naama-Ghanayim (2020) ran a multi-level study on the association and predictive power of 33 teachers on 675 students’ self-esteem, wellbeing, and school engagement. The results demonstrated that teachers’ caring rapport mediates the relationship among these constructs. Moreover, the students attributed this impact to teachers’ perceived meaning of their profession.

As the last variable, engagement refers to the quantity and quality of students’ involvement in classroom activities (Hiver et al., 2021). It is one of the fundamental cores of language learning which affects students’ interest, motivation, self-efficacy, and persistence (Egbert, 2020). Similarly, Dincer et al. (2019) scrutinized the antecedents and outcomes of 412 Turkish EFL students’ classroom engagement in a mixed-method research and found that teachers’ autonomy support in the classroom predicted students’ need satisfaction and self-determined engagement. Correspondingly, students’ engagement predicted academic achievement and absenteeism in English language classes. Likewise, Guilloteaux (2016) explored Korean EFL students’ engagement and found that 87% of the students’ engagement was away from their optimal achievement. More specifically, 50% of the students were disengaged and 37% were moderately engaged in EFL classrooms. Similarly, Tian et al. (2020) examined 1,428 students’ engagement level in Chinese international education and identified that their engagement is less than satisfactory levels. Although research on engagement abounds, most of them are theoretical and quantitative (Hiver et al., 2021) and empirical studies are scanty to be reviewed here. However, there are some recommendations for future research on this construct in the following section.

In this article, it was pinpointed that teaching is a labor-intensive profession which places stress, tension, and accountability on teachers. That is why in many contexts teachers may feel demolished by such unbearable pressures and leave the job. Admitting these, now many educational systems widely embrace the significance of teachers’ emotions and inner states after the emergence of positive psychology. To perform better, teachers should be resilient and academically buoyant in the face of setbacks, like cultural mismatches, linguistic disparities, and language identity (re)formations during instruction. Moreover, it was concluded that teachers’ resiliency and buoyancy depend on several internal and external factors. To survive in such a tense context, teacher should establish a caring rapport with their pupils and engage them in the class through appropriate strategies.

In this study, the researchers drew on PP and presented the theoretical foundations beneath four important constructs of teacher’s resilience, academic buoyancy, care, and student’s engagement. More specifically, their definitions, dimensions, influencing factors, and empirical studies were provided concisely. According to this review article, this domain has valuable implications for different stakeholders, including students, teachers, teacher-trainers, materials developers, and L2 researchers. Considering EFL students, this study is beneficial in that it can increase their knowledge of the joint nature of education. That is to say, students are no longer regarded as passive members of the instruction but active agents who can help their teachers by forming a positive rapport and a caring environment. Students can also reduce the challenges imposed on their teachers and, in turn, their motivation, engagement, achievement, and resiliency improve as well. Regarding EFL teachers, the results are precious in that they improve teachers’ awareness of the inherent difficulties in their job and how their determination, positive emotions, and resiliency can affect different areas of students’ personality and learning. They can use effective coping strategies to fight the traumatic events in teaching and convert the difficulties into opportunities for themselves and their students. Moreover, the results can show them the significance of establishing a caring relationship in the class to improve students’ learning, motivation, self-efficacy, interest, engagement, and the like.

Also, teacher trainers can enjoy the propositions made in this article by offering training courses, seminars, workshops, and professional development programs in which the importance of teachers’ positive emotions and patience and toughness in the face of challenges of the profession is taught to pre-service and in-service EFL teachers. They can also offer useful techniques in TTC classes through which resiliency, buoyancy, and care become an explicit part of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge rather than something assumed in teachers. Additionally, materials developers can use the findings of this study and write materials in which teachers’ emotions are mirrored in the activities. Likewise, they can design activities which can boost teacher-students relationship which, in turn, improves students’ engagement and attainment. When the textbook echoes teachers’ concerns, their stress reduces and a defensive mechanism is constructed to help them tackle the challenges of teaching a foreign language. Finally, L2 researchers can profit from this study in that they can conduct more studies on other related constructs in this research zone.

Although research on this area has brought about insightful ideas, there are still many backdrops and unexplored avenues left to future avid investigators. One of such shortcomings is that most of the conducted studies on teacher’s resilience, buoyancy, care, and student’s engagement are quantitative and based on self-reported, one-shot, and retrospective data instead of real-time and introspective data. As such variables are intra-psychic factors which alter through time, it is wise to scrutinize them qualitatively in case and longitudinal studies. Furthermore, future studies can be ran using diary, portfolio, observation, and reflective journals to see how these constructs are made and affect teachers and students in real time circumstances. Moreover, examining this line of research in ESP and EAP contexts is rare. Therefore, studies can be done on how these constructs work in these contexts even by comparing them with their process in EFL settings. Another flaw is that most of the studies in this area have used non-random sampling which limits their generalizability; hence, researchers are suggested to use random sampling in experimental studies to examine the influence of treatment on these constructs.

The role of culture and socio-cultural context in the (re)construction of the variables of interest in this study has not caught due attention. So, cross-cultural studies can be conducted in different cultural settings to focus on the trajectories and social indicators of such constructs (see Pishghadam et al., 2021). Another limitation is the dominance of teachers’ perspectives in this area, while these constructs can be examined from the viewpoints of other stakeholders, too. Among the variables, teachers’ buoyancy and care have been limitedly studied in EFL/ESL contexts in comparison with resilience and engagement. Consequently, researchers can investigate these two variables in relation to other teacher-related variables, like self-belief, self-efficacy, motivation, commitment, confidence, wellbeing, professional identity, immunity, and self-concept. The mediating role of some demographic and occupational factors in this strand has also gained scant attention. For instance, the impact of teachers’ teaching experience, educational background, and socio-economic status can be examined by future researchers. These flaws show that this line of research is still nascent in EFL/ESL and needs more research.

MZ has made a direct and intellectual contribution to the work and got it ready for its publication.

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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