As one of the concrete pillars of education (Pishghadam et al., 2021), teachers’ professional engagement and success is a determinant of the students’ academic achievement and the total effectiveness of the educational system (Mercer and Dörnyei, 2020). Typically teaching is considered as a challenging vocation and attention-intensive with uncertain nature (Crain et al., 2017), because it requires working with different learners and making hundreds of creative and flexible decisions on the run (Roeser et al., 2012). Recognized as a demanding and stressful occupation, teaching is usually accompanied by high levels of attrition, tension, and other inherently social-emotional demands but with low professional wellbeing (Benevene et al., 2020). However, most of the teachers are incredibly passionate and devoted to their profession. Schaufeli et al. (2002), considering this sense of commitment and zeal as work engagement, point out that enthusiastic teachers act energetically and are highly interested in what they do. In this respect, Cardwell (2011) argues that teachers’ high level of professional engagement favorably influences teaching quality.

Debate on providing access to highly engaged teachers is of critical importance in the recent educational context and research (Staiger and Rockoff, 2010; Pianta et al., 2012). A body of research has tried to study the effectiveness of various factors on teachers’ work engagement including content knowledge, technological pedagogical content knowledge (Han et al., 2020; Özgür, 2020; Bao et al., 2021; Beyranvand and Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021), teacher-efficacy and teacher autonomy (Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2014), emotion regulation and resilience (Xie, 2021), and teacher intrinsic motivation (Bal and Bakker, 2010). To pursue this line of inquiry, the present study aims to examine the role of teacher immunity and mindfulness in predicting English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ work engagement in the Chinese context.

Language teacher immunity, as a potential predictor of teacher work engagement, introduced by Hiver and Dörnyei (2017), is a key constituent in the formation of language teachers’ behavior, perspective toward their profession, and professional identity (Hiver, 2015, 2016). Teacher immunity in general, and language teachers in particular, shed light upon the way teachers’ defense mechanism responds to and lessen the unfavorable impacts of commotion on EFL instructors’ occupational identity (Hiver and Dörnyei, 2017). Teachers’ experience of unrest like other psychological problems caused by challenges and problematic situations is one of the affective factors influencing their teaching. Such pressures mostly caused by L2 stakeholders can decline teachers’ immunity. Several studies have been done to explore the effect of different psychological factors on teacher immunity. For example, research on the effect of gender, age, and teaching experience (Ahmadi et al., 2020), job security, personality traits, (Rahimpour et al., 2020), reflective teaching (Rahmati et al., 2019). Since nobody is innately immune, teachers also are not inherently protected against unexpected and disturbing factors. Therefore, considering the importance of their profession, their immunity should be enhanced (Beyranvand and Mohamadi Zenouzagh, 2021). Training and equipping teachers with a crucial understanding of different emotional factors of the education context and emotion-regulation strategies can help them to succeed in their profession and consequently support and promote learners’ success (Bielak and Mystkowsks-Wiertelak, 2020; Derakhshan et al., 2021a).

Along with teacher immunity, mindfulness is another factor leading teachers to be engaged in their work. Mindfulness was defined as the ability to concentrate non-judgementally on purpose at the present time (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). In its operationalized definition, mindfulness refers to the self-regulation of attention on present events and the ability to be open and non-reactive. Therefore, mindfulness and awareness of the moment-to-moment experiences happening in the workplace can act as a promising shelter against stressors. Recent studies on mindfulness have shown that teachers’ familiarity with this concept can alter their understanding of attention-regulation and mindfulness, and consequently reduce job stress and distance from the profession (Jennings and Greenberg, 2009; Crain et al., 2017).

Considering the research on teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement are in their infancy, the relationship among them has not received enough attention. Bakker et al. (2008) consider feeling energetic and absorbed by the work as the effective constituents of work engagement being relevant to teacher immunity. While several studies have been conducted on different factors influencing teacher engagement, particularly in the Chinese context (Hiver, 2017; Zeng et al., 2019; Han et al., 2020; Xie, 2021), the important variables of teacher immunity and mindfulness have received less attention. To our knowledge, few studies have been done on the relationship among immunity, mindfulness, and teachers’ absorbedness, i.e., work engagement, particularly in China. Therefore, this study aims to explore the relationship among these three factors and the prediction power of teacher immunity and mindfulness regarding Chinese EFL teachers’ work engagement in the Chinese EFL context by answering these research questions:

Based on Spearman Rho correlation index and linear multiple regression analysis, the present study employs a correlational (associational) design of research, since it can be used to test a relationship among variables as well as make predictions. To conduct the present work, Likert-scale questionnaires were used. As Mackey and Gass (2005) point out, questionnaires are “one of the most common methods of collecting data on attitudes and opinions from a large group of participants” p. 92).

The aim of the present study is to investigate the contribution of Chinese EFL teachers’ immunity and mindfulness in their engagement in the workplace. Therefore, this study has been done with two objectives: first, to examine the existence of any interrelationship among three psychological variables named teacher immunity, teacher mindfulness, and teacher work engagement; second, to examine the prediction power of teachers’ immunity and mindfulness regarding Chinese EFL teachers’ work engagement. Our findings are that there does exist an indication of a positive relationship among variables and the predictive power of teacher immunity and teacher mindfulness. The interrelatedness of these three factors has not been previously investigated in the EFL context of China. Considering the novelty of the teacher immunity, mindfulness, engagement, and lack of vast research coverage, the researchers try to get wise to new facts rather than supporting the previous studies.

Regarding the first research question, the results indicate that there is a direct positive correlation between teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement. That is, EFL teachers who have a more powerful mindfulness system have a higher level of immunity and engagement and vice versa. This finding may unfold some factors affecting language teacher immunity and broaden our knowledge of the constructs that are inseparably linked with it. This part of the findings is consistent with Hiver’s statement of “teacher immunity affects almost everything that teachers do in their careers” (Hiver, 2015, p. 226).

Concerning the relationship between Chinese teacher immunity and their work engagement, the results reveal that there is a significant correlation. That is, teachers’ resistance to workplace challenges and staying in an energetic manner in their profession are related to commitment and engagement. This finding confirms Hiver (2017) who believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between engagement and immunity and explains it in relation to resilience and self-efficacy as the integral constituents of teacher immunity. Hiver (2017) argues that one of the contributing factors to language teacher immunity is resilience helping them to remain engaged and to cope with the challenges. Considering language teaching as fundamentally relationship-based, Hiver (2018) and Pishghadam et al. (2021) believe that teacher resilience can be cultivated in the teacher-student interactions bringing about finding purpose on the part of the teacher and consequently engaging in meaningful teaching. According to the study by Han et al. (2020) in the Chinese context, teacher efficacy has a positive correlation with teacher engagement. In this respect, our findings support Noughabi et al. (2020) who pointed out that “various aspects of teacher engagement (i.e., cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, social engagement with learners, and social engagement with colleagues) could affect experienced EFL teachers’ immunity” (p. 7). It can be claimed that engagement can help teachers to pave the way to reach productive immunity. Therefore, supporting the earlier reporting of a positive association between teacher engagement and efficacy and resilience in China (Han et al., 2020; Bao et al., 2021), the reports from the data analysis of the present study indicate that teacher engagement and teacher immunity are tied together. However, the relationship of engagement and other constituents of teacher immunity such as coping, classroom affectivity, openness to change, attitudes toward teaching, and Burnout needs to be studied.

As concerning the relationship between teacher mindfulness and immunity, and engagement, the current study showed a positive direct relationship. Although there is no research on the relationship of these three variables, each as a whole construct, there are some correlational studies on their constituent. This finding supports Chiesa et al. (2011) who argue that mindfulness practices can promote teachers’ regulation strategies and psychological potentials, whereby teachers’ substantiality increases. According to previous studies, the mindfulness of teachers broadens their social relationships, which we can consider as social engagement, self-care, reflectivity (Li, 2021). Furthermore, the correlational studies pinpoint a close tie between mindfulness and task engagement (Kee and Liu, 2011), teacher wellbeing (Jennings, 2015), emotional regulation (Bielak and Mystkowsks-Wiertelak, 2020), and teachers’ and students’ academic performance (Li, 2021). A study by Waldman and Carmel (2019) on the impact of mindfulness on L2 teachers’ self-efficacy shows that there is a positive correlation between mindfulness practice and self-efficacy. Since the relationship between immunity and mindfulness is direct and positive, it supports the idea that mindfulness can minimize automatic stress reactivity and increase mental clarity and emotional calm as well as the ability to cope and openness to change (Crain et al., 2017).

As to the second research question and the prediction power of the teacher immunity and mindfulness concerning Chines EFL teachers’ work engagement, the finding shows that immunity and mindfulness can predict the existence of engagement. Considering the direct and positive correlation among these three variables, finding this predictive value seems reasonable. Since the previous studies (Hiver, 2017; Noughabi et al., 2020) and also the findings of research question one show a positive and reciprocal relationship among teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement, the prediction of work engagement by the level of immunity and mindfulness is deductible. In addition to obtaining evidence on prediction power, we are interested to know which variable can be a more powerful predictor. The analysis of the data shows that EFL teachers’ immunity contributes highly to Chinese EFL teachers’ engagement in the workplace. To sum up, the review of the literature suggests that there are scant studies on them and more complementing research is demanded in different contexts.

In light of working on the present manuscript, these types of research have valuable implications for stakeholders in education and particularly EFL contexts. It is clear that teachers’ affect, emotions, and psychology play a critical role in education whose performance is influenced by many external and internal factors. Hence, students’ motivation, learning, and achievements all depend on the teacher’s motivation (Derakhshan et al., 2021b), and other psychological states. Given that teaching is a demanding and stressful occupation placing tensions and pressures on teachers, they must be trained and psychologically prepared to cope with such adversities. This line of research can be beneficial for teachers in that they get aware of the language teaching demands and the fact that this profession is famous for its emotional strains, adversities, and stress (Derakhshan, 2021). Similarly, by learning how to deal with these adversities through developing required strategies teachers can create an affluent atmosphere for students. On the other hand, the familiarity of students with the language teaching and learning nature, and their responsibility in creating a rich instructional setting, they make an effort to minimize classroom tensions to help their teacher feel relaxed and focus on the teaching subject.

General to the research world, our study also suffers from some flows which can be eliminated in future studies. It is mentionable that the primary limitation of our work was that our data were collected under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the participants were asked to consider “normal times” in answering the questionnaire, not during the pandemic, it is supposed that far-working has its own tensions and adversities which can influence EFL teachers’ psychological perceptions and contaminate the data. The second limitation is related to the online data collection and dispersing of the questionnaires. Due to the pandemic constraints on traveling, dispersing questionnaires in-person to EFL teachers from different parts of China was impossible and most of our participants came from one province which influence the generalizability of the findings. Furthermore, collecting data from EFL teachers with different demographic characteristics, especially their teaching experience and the level they teach couldn’t consider in detail. Finally, employing a mere questionnaire may shed light on some aspects and others remain in shadow. Therefore, it is suggested to include an interview and even retrospective methods after some workdays in future studies to have a clear understanding of the emerged relationships among immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement. Besides, considering the existence and also the director of the relationship among the studied variables is suggested in EFL online classes and in real normal time, respectively. Last but not least, we suggest the replication of the present study in different teaching levels, i.e., in schools, language institutes, and higher education, and on teachers with different years of experiences separately to have the effect of experiences and teaching levels on the relationship of EFL teachers’ immunity, mindfulness, and engagement in their work.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the author, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by NCWU Academic and Ethics Committee. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for 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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