The development of professional identity and its associations with emotions: An empirical study of university eap teachers with diverse ethnic backgrounds

Although the significance of professional identity to language teachers has been widely acknowledged, much remains unknown about the dynamic process of emotion negotiation and identity development of FL/SL teachers with different ethnical background under the Covid-19 pandemic context. Through a semi-structured interview with 10 EAP teachers from an EMI university in China, this study aimed to explore how their professional identity changed and transformed since the outbreak of the Covid-19, and how it negotiated with emotions during the pandemic. The following results were obtained: (1) Ethnical background was one of the significant factors influencing the development of teacher's professional identity; (2) international teachers were found to be more susceptible to the pandemic and compared with their Chinese counterparts, they generated more negative emotions; (3) teacher-student classroom interactions were found to be one of the significant factors triggering the emotional changes and transformation of professional identities regardless of their ethnical backgrounds.