Online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic: Vietnamese language teachers’ emotions, regulation strategies and institutional policy and management

Teaching is often described as one of the most emotion-laden professions. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversion to online teaching has triggered new emotional experiences of teachers that not many studies have taken into account. Studying emotion from a poststructuralist lens, this study examines the emotional experiences of 10 language teachers in a university in Vietnam and their responses to the new teaching platforms. Analysis of the in-depth semi-structured interviews shows that the pedagogically and technologically distinctive features of online teaching aroused unique challenges for and emotions of the teachers, both positive and negative. Also, the teachers reported a number of strategies to cope with the new situation which we term as in-the-moment and out-of-class emotion regulation. The study highlights the need for acknowledgment and support for teachers in terms of resources, policy and management of institutions in the “new normal situation,” while displaying teachers’ self-reliance and emotional self-regulation. The article calls for attention to teachers emotion as an integral dimension of the profession, regardless of the physical or virtual setting of the classroom.