Exploring Emotional Vulnerability and Sense of Agency in the Digital Realm: A Three-Year Case Study of an EFL Teacher in South Korea

Abstract

This study presents the findings from a longitudinal case study on a Korean English teacher’s experience of emotional vulnerability and professional development in online teaching. Grounded in an ecological perspective on teacher agency and emotional vulnerability, the study investigates how and why the teacher exercised agency in navigating her emotional challenges and adapting to the virtual teaching environment. Data were collected from various sources, including interviews, observations, field notes, and artifacts, for three years. The findings showed that the intricate connection between the teacher’s multiple and dynamic emotions, beliefs, and concurrent working environments significantly influences her engagement in digital teaching practices. Furthermore, the teacher’s emotional vulnerability in virtual teaching facilitated her engagement in reflective and action-oriented practices, leading to a more proactive approach to exploring and implementing alternative teaching methods online. The findings highlight the interplay between emotions, agency, and identity development, emphasizing the importance of experiencing, understanding, negotiating, and expressing emotions to discover potential alternative teaching resources and methods in ever-changing teaching environments. This study provides insights into how teachers can leverage their emotions and exercise teacher agency to enhance their professional growth and adaptability in digital learning environments.

1. Introduction

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought about dramatic and rapid changes in language teaching environments. In this uncertain situation, language teachers are faced with the challenge of understanding their student’s learning needs and making informed decisions regarding teaching materials and methods. Additionally, the use of technology in language teaching causes educators to encounter additional stressors, such as increased workload, concerns about online teaching, and perceived professional vulnerability [1,2,3,4].

Notably, the rapid transition in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching environments has yielded both favorable and adverse consequences that exert a substantial influence on the professional lives of EFL educators [2]. For example, using technology enables educators to teach EFL students online in these special times and maintain positive attitudes toward their teaching profession by enhancing their digital competence. On the other hand, the provision of online instruction engenders cognitive and affective obstacles for teachers due to limited digital competence and scant prior experience in virtual teaching that educators are expected to surmount. By the same token, with the integration of technology in highly complex social, political, and dilemmatic educational environments, teachers often have to (re)shape their everyday school practices in order to acclimatize themselves to conflicting or dilemmatic beliefs, ideas, and tasks [1,5,6]. The abrupt transition to online English teaching environments has also created significant emotional challenges for Korean teachers, including the focal participant of this study, Ahn. However, unfortunately, the school administration primarily focused on online pedagogy, leaving teachers to grapple independently with their negative emotions and instructional obstacles.

Moreover, although emotional vulnerability can positively influence human actions, potentially leading to positive outcomes in educational settings, the current body of research on English teachers’ emotional vulnerability and agency remains limited in scope. Therefore, there is a compelling need to explore how teachers explore and negotiate the emotional challenges inherent in online teaching, and how these experiences subsequently shape their agency as teacher agents. Examining the emotional vulnerability within online teaching not only at the personal and professional levels, but also through an ecological lens that considers the broader working conditions of the teaching profession [1,7], can provide valuable insights into this phenomenon.

Following these lines, this study aims to examine the spatiotemporal dynamics of emotions and the relations between teachers’ sense of emotional vulnerability and actions, focusing on two research questions: (1) How does an EFL teacher in a Korean elementary school experience a sense of emotional vulnerability in teaching English in virtual space over the course of three years (from early 2020 till late 2022)? and (2) How does she enact and (re)develop her agency as a professional? The findings of this study will contribute to the existing literature on the influence of emotional vulnerability on teacher agency, particularly regarding online teaching in EFL contexts, and will underscore the significance of teachers’ engagement in reflective practices for the process of (re)constructing their professional self-understanding [1,8].

2. Theoretical Perspective and Literature Review

2.1. Conceptualizing Teacher Agency from an Ecological Perspective

Individuals produce or determine their actions via conscious choices which may influence and are influenced by the social conditions they are situated in [9]. It indicates that agency is not fixed, rather it is “the reflexive project of the self” [10] (pp. 52–55), which leads individuals to actively explore “how to be and how to act” (p. 75) to recognize their self-identity [11]. Accordingly, teacher agency can be better conceptualized from an ecological viewpoint by identifying agency as a “quality of the engagement of actors with temporal-relational contexts-for-action, not a quality of the actors themselves” [12] (p. 137).

From an ecological perspective, agency is not a static possession but rather something that is achieved through active engagement with contextual factors, characterized by routine, purpose, and judgment [13]. This understanding aligns with the concept of teacher agency, which emphasizes the activation of agency through the interaction between affordances and teachers’ capacities within specific behavioral settings [14,15,16]. Within this ecological framework, teacher agency involves a dynamic process of reflective practice which includes the examination of past experiences, formulation of future goals and plans, and critical evaluation to determine appropriate courses of action [17,18,19].

The ecological understanding of agency also highlights the interconnectedness between agency and self-understanding in virtual spaces [1]. In online teaching, teacher agency encompasses the essential capabilities and actions of teachers in distance language education, such as online curriculum development, technology-enhanced instruction, and remote assessment of student learning outcomes [15]. It is crucial for teachers to effectively fulfill their responsibilities in an online setting and to create digital affordances through their interactions with digital instructional conditions, thereby facilitating their role as remote educators [20]. In this view, reflective practices play a critical role in teachers’ self-understanding, influencing their self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and future perspectives on professional development, which in turn shape how agency is enacted within educational contexts [1].

In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, EFL teachers encounter a number of challenges in online teaching, such as a lack of appropriate teaching resources, student demotivation, and problems in using technology and accessing the internet during online classes [3,21]. Despite an array of hurdles in online teaching, it is often reported that the challenges are more of a help than a hindrance, especially for teachers. Specifically, their voluntary act of integrating digital technologies into their work and promoting their digital skills lead to building positive beliefs and enhancing awareness about the importance of the adaptation of digital technology within classroom contexts. Consequently, teachers’ self-understanding of the affordances and constraints of digital technologies enables them to look for or further develop resources to reframe their teaching practices in virtual classroom contexts [1,21,22].

Teachers are aware of the complexities inherent in changing classrooms and that they need to call on a large range of resources, techniques, and activities to make an online lesson memorable and motivating for their students. Also, in order to transform their teaching practices according to drastically changing classroom environments, uniform decisions on the use of resources need to be made prior to taking action. This aligns with Levine’s view on teacher agency, as “all of the relevant elements of the complex system of a person moving across a field are interconnected” [23] (p. 17). Namely, teacher agency plays a critical role in a drastically changing teaching environment, which in turn demands changes in teachers’ teaching practices.

2.2. Emotional Vulnerability and Agency of EFL Teachers in Online Spaces during the Pandemic

Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, teachers were ambivalent toward techno-led EFL teaching processes as the consequence of relatively lower levels of satisfaction with curriculum design and the availability of materials online [2]. Further, teachers are prone to viewing online teaching as a complex and time-consuming process which leaves them demotivated and emotionally vulnerable to exploiting digital technologies and internet sources. However, the COVID-19 pandemic state brought changes to teachers’ beliefs and values toward digital teaching which in turn transformed their actions—voluntarily and actively integrating technology into their online classrooms [3].

Despite teachers’ positive attitudes and commitment to online teaching, it is undeniable that teachers (still) encounter a wide range of challenges related to the presence of both positive and negative emotions toward virtual teaching environments [24]. Wong and Moorehouse’s [24] study on the digital competence of Hong Kong language teachers in online teaching highlights several key challenges. These include “students’ access to technology, efficient use of time by both teachers and learners, the integration of synchronous and asynchronous methods, adapting lessons for diverse groups of English learners, and keeping students engaged in a digital environment” (pp. 6–8). A significant concern that emerged was how to engage students effectively, with many teachers feeling uncertain and anxious about how to support those who were disengaged. However, as time went on, teachers became more attuned to the potential of different technologies, enabling them to refine their digital skills and teaching strategies.

Barcelos et al. [8] suggest that “[teacher] emotions serve as emotional energy for moving teaching and learning systems [… and as] part of a critical process of change” (p. 11). It underscores that teachers are “active agents” (p. 900), which aligns with the idea that human beings possess the capability to influence their lives and environment while they are simultaneously influenced by a complex interplay of social and individual factors [25]. Namely, for teacher agents, having a sense of emotional vulnerability is a start of voluntary and agentive exploration, movement, and transformation [26,27,28].

Teachers’ sense of emotional vulnerability refers to how they view their interactions with other individuals in the school and the community, which includes not only emotions but also cognitive processes such as perception and interpretation [29]. Teachers’ feelings of vulnerability become evident during crucial turning points or key events in which they perceive a loss of control over tasks and processes that they feel responsible for as educators [30]. Specifically, the critical moments hold significant personal and professional meaning for the teachers, accentuating their sense of emotional vulnerability, which in turn greatly impacts the quality of teachers’ professional performance and their job satisfaction [29].

A good example can be found in Sari’s study of two Indonesian English teachers’ emotions and agency in online teaching [31]. Nuranti and Intan experienced high emotional labor in dealing with online teaching, which had a negative impact on their work engagement, job satisfaction, and confidence as teachers, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic situation. However, rather than suppressing their emotions, they exercised and showed evidence of teacher agency by critically reflecting on how they could wisely respond to their emotional challenges and by exploring what they could do to improve their online teaching.

Similarly, a study by Fu and Clarke on the impact of online courses on the development of teacher agency underscores the role of emotions in aiding agency [32]. In this paper, graduate student participants, who were also working as schoolteachers, reported “emotional breakdown” [32] (p. 673) which they encountered by missing the opportunity for in-person teaching practices during the pandemic. In order to manage their emotions well, they voluntarily chose to share the emotions of vulnerability, disconnectedness, and hope with other graduate school students in online courses. The shared experiences of their emotions gave them the opportunity to (re)develop their agency regarding online teaching. Although the research was conducted in science teacher education courses, rather than EFL or language education courses, it is important to note that the findings of this study show how teacher emotions perform a shaping role by “[facilitating] interactions between individual, collective and social structure” (p. 677) in online courses. Their voluntary actions to share emotions also enhance their motivation and teaching skills by transforming online courses into online communities.

In a similar vein, Nazari and Seyri’s research on six Iranian teachers’ identity construction in virtual contexts suggests that multiple factors in the teachers’ transition to online teaching mode, such as their limited digital competence, increasing workload, and lack of facilities, create enormous tensions and stress which limit “their potential to act” [33] (p. 11). However, instead of being absorbed in their frustrations, the teachers sought ways of presenting their online lessons, becoming more “technology-oriented teachers” (p. 14), which enhanced their efficacy beliefs.

As can be seen from the existing literature on teacher emotions and agency, having a sense of emotional vulnerability indeed has an impact on their agency as professionals. Appropriately, the emotional dimension—its transformative power—offers opportunities for teachers to gradually (re)shape and promote their agency [8,33]. This implies that both pre- and in-service teachers should receive appropriate education and support to effectively navigate their emotional challenges, enabling them to take proactive steps toward becoming successful language teachers. However, there is a scarcity of research that investigates how EFL teachers in South Korea, where English holds a prominent position in education, navigate their emotions within the rapidly changing teaching conditions brought about by the pandemic, especially through a longitudinal research design. Therefore, there is a need to examine the emotional vulnerability of Korean EFL teachers in online teaching contexts and their perception of teacher agency. With this gap in mind, this study aims to explore these aspects in the following sections.

3. Methodology

3.1. Researcher Role, Research Context, and a Teacher Participant

Ms. Ahn (pseudonym) was one of my close friends who worked as a Korean EFL teacher in South Korea. We often talked about various topics and issues regarding EFL teaching and learning. However, our conversations took a different tone after the outbreak of COVID-19 in South Korea. Ahn informed me that the start of the new school year was delayed due to the pandemic, and she was tasked with designing an online English teaching curriculum. She expressed concerns about teaching in virtual contexts and desired to find better ways to engage her students. Seeking to collaborate on developing better EFL pedagogy in the online space, I sought her consent to participate in the research project titled “EFL teacher’s agency and teaching practices during the pandemic.” From that point until December 2022, I performed the roles of a researcher, teacher, and close friend, caring about her emotions while exploring the development of her agency as an English teacher.

I acknowledge that my positionality as Ahn’s friend may limit the generalizability of the findings and might not fully capture the complex realities and narratives of her case. However, by embracing reflexivity, I believe this approach can yield research that is more inclusive of significant subjective elements [34]. The researcher’s personal experiences and insights should be seen as valuable assets that enhance the depth and richness of the analysis and representation of the research data and findings [35]. This can be achieved by appreciating the diversity and richness of the researcher’s own life experiences, their relationships with research participants, and other ecological aspects [35].

This three-year longitudinal qualitative case study was conducted in a regional foreign language center supported by the Yung-an (pseudonym) County Office and operated by a provincial educational office. The center aimed to provide English and Chinese language learning support to elementary students from rural schools. Prior to the pandemic, students from multiple rural schools visited the center at least once a month during a semester, engaging in various English learning activities with Ahn, a Korean English teacher, and Liz, an English teacher from the UK.

The center was equipped with studios where students could engage in English conversations with the teachers, simulating real-life situations. Emphasizing the development of communicative skills, the teachers used to design interactive and communicative language activities, incorporating visual and audio materials, which primarily offered in-person instructions. However, the sudden shift to online teaching necessitated the redevelopment of the entire curriculum and materials suitable for online learning environments, utilizing platforms such as Zoom (version 1.1.1), YouTube (version 14.43.55), and KakaoTalk, a popular messaging app in Korea.

Ahn had over eight years of experience as an English teacher at the center. However, when it came to online teaching of young English learners in Yung-an County, Ahn had specific concerns. Firstly, she was aware that students in rural schools generally had lower English proficiency compared to those in nearby urban areas. She was worried that these students might struggle to understand English expressions introduced online. Additionally, she observed that EFL learners in rural areas had less interest in English learning as they had limited opportunities to use English in their daily lives. Consequently, her main concern focused on how to motivate underperforming students through online teaching and how to design an effective online program curriculum tailored to their English skill development with or without limited in-person interactions.

3.2. Data Collection and Analysis

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ahn experienced significant emotional challenges and difficulties due to the sudden change from offline to online teaching. To gain a comprehensive understanding of Ahn’s emotional vulnerability and the (re)construction of her agency, data were collected over a three-year period (2020–2022) from various sources, including interviews, observations, fieldnotes, and artifacts (e.g., lesson plans) (

Table 1. Overview of data collection procedures.

Method	Data Source	2020	2021	2022
Interviews	Semi-structured interviews with Ahn Semi-structured interviews with Ahn’s students
Observations	Video and audio recordings in the classroom
Fieldnotes	Field notes in the classroom
Artifacts	Artifacts/documents (e.g., teaching materials, Ahn’s personal notes on teaching experiences) screenshots/recordings

).

A total of 75 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Ahn biweekly, focusing on her perceptions and experiences of online teaching practices, actions taken to adapt to the online mode, and challenges encountered. The interviews were conducted through KakaoTalk, with 32 video interviews and 43 in-person interviews. All interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed.

Seven non-participatory classroom observations were conducted during Ahn’s transition to online teaching in May, June, and July 2020, and an additional eleven observations took place in June and July 2021 and in 2022. The focus of these observations was twofold: first, to gain a deeper understanding of Ahn’s emotional challenges in online teaching, and second, to observe the actions she took to address and overcome these emotional difficulties and resolve issues related to virtual teaching. The observations were digitally recorded, and field notes were taken to provide contextual information for subsequent visits and interpretation of transcripts.

Additionally, eight students participated in semi-structured interviews at the beginning and end of the spring semester in 2020. The interviews were conducted to gain insight into the effectiveness of online teaching from the student’s perspective. The exploration of their views on online teaching was a crucial aspect of this study, as their responses and reactions to the challenges of transitioning to an online learning environment were expected to have a significant impact on the development and exercise of teacher agency within a dynamic and spontaneous process of reflective practice [17,18,19].

Data analysis involved qualitative thematic analysis using the constant comparative method [36] and an individual-level logic model [37]. Theoretical perspectives from teacher agency and emotional vulnerability research provided an interpretive framework for analyzing the data. The data were transcribed and analyzed inductively, with initial coding focusing on capturing the EFL teacher’s emotional challenges, reflective practices, and attitudes toward online teaching experiences [38]. The coding process aimed to identify prominent themes and categories, and triangulation was employed to enhance the reliability and validity of the findings. Through the data analysis, it became evident that the EFL teacher exhibited agency at various levels to mitigate emotional vulnerability associated with online teaching modes and contexts.

4. Findings

This section presents three key findings regarding Ahn’s experiences of emotional vulnerability resulting from sudden changes in her teaching environments and her agentive actions taken to deliver online lessons that best suit her students. Ahn demonstrated a conscious recognition and acknowledgment of the affordances and constraints of online teaching. Particularly, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during a time of uncertainty, she actively sought out online resources for her current and future courses. Through the process of searching for and utilizing online sources and platforms, she became aware of certain limitations in using them within educational settings. It heightened the dilemmas surrounding her decisions regarding online teaching resources. Despite the constraints imposed by limited resources and the constrained educational policy and context, Ahn exhibited the exercise of her teacher agency, empowering herself to seek alternative ways of supporting her students’ English learning in the midst of the situation.

4.1. Online Teaching as an Affordance and Constraint

According to Ahn, when she and her colleagues first heard about the news of school closure in response to COVID-19, they projected their assumptions about online teaching. With little or no prior experience in online teaching, Ahn and her colleagues found it challenging to envision their tasks and the available digital resources for the new school year. Such circumstances created a sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

However, as Ahn became involved in online teaching practices, she gradually recognized the possibilities of supporting her students’ English learning through online platforms. During the spring semester of 2020, Ahn and her co-teacher, Liz, decided to provide asynchronous sessions to students through the center’s webpage. They recorded lessons following the English national curriculum and uploaded video recordings on the webpage. They also encouraged students to leave questions or comments below each recording.

Students commented on the recordings, expressing their interest in the teachers’ actual use of English in Korea and their desire to use similar expressions. These comments provided Ahn with a sense of the benefits of online teaching for her students. As mentioned in the interview script below, Ahn made efforts to record her lessons not only at the center but also in real-life settings such as supermarkets, restaurants, and even at the ferry station.

“As you know, I can’t have students do actual activities at the center these days… So, for these [asynchronous sessions] … For example, I visited a nearby restaurant with Liz and video recorded our performance in English, showing what expressions could be used to order food at a real restaurant, not at the studio in the center. This makes students become more involved and interested in English by having a secondhand experience of real-life English use”. (Interview, 27 May 2020, originally in Korean)

Regarding the recordings, students highlighted that the videos helped them remember the expressions and the contexts in which they were used. One student specifically mentioned, “Before the pandemic, the teachers just pretended to buy something to show us how English expressions could be used. But in the videos, they actually went to the supermarket and bought items using English!” (4th-grade student interview, 29 May 2020, originally in Korean). Upon encountering the student’s comment, Ahn experienced a sense of gratification, which served as additional motivation to seek out more effective methods for teaching English online.

From July 2020, the center provided both synchronous and asynchronous lessons as part of a blended English program. Ahn acknowledged that online teaching allowed students to access learning materials easily and study more flexibly outside the classroom. It also provided her and Liz with a wider range of online teaching resources. Specifically, with the start of the blended program, Ahn and Liz could search for useful online resources which enabled Ahn to overcome concerns about her limited digital competence.

She then reconfigured the resources for synchronous lessons with a group of students from a nearby rural school (Figure 1). Ahn gained confidence in teaching both synchronously and asynchronously in online environments. However, several obstacles arose, particularly regarding monitoring and supporting students’ understanding of the learned knowledge. For example, Ahn used affective feedback, such as giving two thumbs up, to encourage students’ active participation (shown on the left side of Figure 1), but the students were unable to see her hand gestures clearly because of the small size of the screen. Moreover, due to the virtual nature of the meeting room, the teachers were unable to assess whether the students effectively adhered to the instructions, as the visibility of the students’ facial responses was limited (shown in the red boxes of Figure 1). Ahn perceived this limitation as a constraint in her online teaching environment.

During the online teaching period, Ahn encountered a multitude of affordances and constraints in her virtual teaching experience. Notably, she consistently sought out resources and engaged in negotiation to enhance her online teaching practices, despite occasionally facing emotional vulnerability in adapting to the new teaching environment.

4.2. A New and Increasing Dilemma in (Re)building Agentive Action: Emotional Challenges

As addressed in the previous section, Ahn’s recognition of the limitations of teaching in the online space and her limited digital competence significantly impacted her teacher agency and had a negative emotional impact. To overcome the emotional challenges of online teaching, she decided to improve her digital skills by voluntarily participating in technology training offered by the Department of Education and regional schools. However, despite the training courses, Ahn faced additional challenges in implementing technology in the online classroom. These challenges included a lack of technological tools, internet connection problems, and an excessive workload.

For instance, during the fall semester of 2020, Ahn was required to create a YouTube channel due to the storage capacity limitations of the center webpage. Recognizing the necessity and ease of student access, Ahn uploaded online lessons to her YouTube channel. However, she expressed her lack of knowledge and the added burden of managing the channel, stating,

“While working on the channel, I realize that I am the one who craft the videos… and I am the only one who handles the channel […] I have no idea how to use it… [so I need to learn about it…] But as you know, that is not the only duty I have. I have too many things on my plate”. (Interview, 30 August 2020, originally in Korean)

Ahn’s experience with managing the school’s YouTube channel appeared to cause significant stress.

Additionally, because most of her students were novice English learners, Ahn utilized semiotic and non-semiotic resources in designing, implementing, and editing video recordings of online lessons to enhance students’ understanding of English words. For example, to teach the English word “knees”, she did not merely tell its Korean definition but included a subtitle of its meaning in Korean, a related image, and her body gesture in the video. Despite her endeavors to support her students’ English language proficiency by adding subtitles and images to the videos, the extra time and energy required for editing added to her workload, ultimately contributing to her emotional challenges in the teaching profession. Yet, when talking about her challenging situation, Ahn expressed,

“Adding subtitles and images in the video recordings is not a mandatory requirement. I choose to do it voluntarily to support and facilitate my students’ understanding of English words and expressions, especially considering their relatively low English proficiency and the fact that, in most cases, they have no one to assist them in understanding English at home” (Interview, 6 August 2020, originally in Korean).

Her statement signifies the demonstration of her agency as a teacher, even amidst feelings of vulnerability, as she undertook the task of creating online videos tailored to her students’ English learning needs.

4.3. Her Continuing Attempts to Tackle the Distressing Situations

As the pandemic prolonged, Ahn continued to experience emotional vulnerability in using technology for her English teaching. However, instead of repressing her negative emotions, she openly shared her concerns and difficulties with the center staff and co-teachers, seeking their help. Through negotiations with her colleagues, they made improvements to their work conditions to better navigate the challenges of online teaching.

One of the agreed-upon solutions was to keep the center website up to date, eliminating the need for further video uploads on YouTube. Additionally, the center requested countryside schools to play the online lesson videos on digital boards, allowing students to frequently engage with the English expressions learned via YouTube even without internet access.

Another significant cause of Ahn’s negative emotions toward online teaching was the lack of real-time communication with her students. Some of her students were too young to leave comments voluntarily on the center website, and not all schools requested synchronous online sessions, making it challenging to directly address their English learning needs. During an interview in early 2021, Ahn expressed her desire to hear their needs in real time:

“In face-to-face meetings, students directly ask me for further explanations of specific English expressions in Korean, allowing me to assess their understanding in real-time. However, in online settings, I am unable to gauge their responses to my teaching or receive immediate feedback, which can be frustrating at times…. I truly want to listen and learn about my students’ needs so that I can incorporate them into my online teaching” (Interview, 3 March 2021, originally in Korean).

Consequently, she requested regional schools to participate in a student survey on her online teaching, aiming to further enhance her online lessons. Overall, despite feeling emotionally vulnerable during online teaching, Ahn took proactive steps to address her concerns. She sought more online resources, worked on improving her technological skills, and focused on enhancing her online teaching skills, ultimately reconstructing her teacher agency.

5. Discussion

The findings of this study highlight the emotional vulnerability experienced by Ahn in online teaching environments and how she responded to the ever-changing educational contexts. Ahn’s online teaching practices were influenced by various ecological aspects and marked by emotional, agentive, and professional shifts [33]. As addressed in the findings, despite the difficult emotions caused by the sudden transition of teaching modes and environments, Ahn did not ignore or repress her feelings. Rather, she attempted to create a turning moment by agentively searching for and learning about online materials and platforms, by listening to her students’ needs, and by sharing her difficulties with colleagues. This shows that “difficult emotions [work] as plausible resources” [8] (p. 9) in language teaching, illustrating teachers’ capability of exploring, expressing, and dealing with emotional challenges, which also demonstrates their strong professional orientation.

At a time of uncertainty and demanding teaching environments, Ahn also consciously acknowledged the upsides and downsides of online language teaching, especially in educating students in rural areas. In order to overcome the perceived constraints, she actively sought digital materials to better support her students’ English learning. Namely, the emotional challenges she faced motivated her to take action as a professional teacher.

A similar finding is reported by Wong and Moorehouse [24], who noted that teachers were able to adapt their instruction by drawing on their in-person teaching experience to foster relationships and meaning-making with their students in digital settings, despite facing various challenges and frustrations in providing quality education. As Fu and Clarke note, teachers’ professional goals empower them “to become agents of change” [32] (p. 679) despite having a sense of emotional vulnerability toward teaching in virtual contexts. It indicates that the challenges of using digital applications in online educational settings need to be recognized in relation to teachers’ emotions, working environments, digital abilities, and desires, as well as diverse groups of students [6].

Ahn’s attempts to interact with the challenges of online teaching indicate her agency in developing teacher professionalism. However, she also faced dilemmas in aligning her agentive actions with instructions from education officials and school administrators [39]. This suggests that emotions are intertwined with agency development, emphasizing the importance of experiencing, understanding, negotiating, and expressing emotions in seeking alternatives [40]. It also indicates that teacher emotions play a significant role in language teacher professionalism and can be sites for transformation or resistance [8,41].

Despite becoming emotionally vulnerable in online teaching, it did not hinder the development of Ahn’s teacher agency. Instead, recognizing emotional challenges allowed her to reflect on her resources and teaching methods, adapt them to online teaching, and reduce stress caused by sudden environmental changes. It demonstrates Ahn’s ability to build “a subjective lens” which enables her to recognize her teaching environment, assign meaning to it, and take purposeful actions [29] (p. 66). Moreover, the findings suggest that the connection between emotions and agency affects her satisfaction and self-efficacy beliefs as an EFL teacher [20].

The pedagogical use of digital technologies has gained appreciation since the 2020 outbreak of coronavirus, which puts teachers in an emotionally challenging position regarding displaying or developing their digital competences [24]. Moreover, the changes in educational conditions and the interplay between individual emotion, effort, digital skills, and ecological conditions impact teacher agency [1]. This indicates that understanding teachers’ challenges, opportunities, and emotional processes is crucial for their professional development. Also, as Poimbeauf notes, teachers need to be qualified “[not only] to teach [subject areas] but also […] to deal with the realities of today’s classroom” as part of “their surviving skills” [42] (p. 185), which highlights the role of teacher agency. In line with these ideas, the findings of this study suggest the importance of implementing a triadic chain of online practice reports, online practice appraisal, and extending knowledge to the classroom, as it can empower teachers to better express their ideas and feelings about online teaching practices and to become more agentive [22].

6. Conclusions

The current study suggests that teachers’ emotional vulnerability can serve as a critical resource for the development of agency in online teaching practices. While the findings expand existing research on this topic, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the study. Data were collected from a single case, which may not fully represent the exercise of agency and emotional vulnerability among EFL teachers in South Korea. For future research, I suggest conducting a multiple case study that involves comparative analysis. This approach would provide additional layers of understanding and highlight commonalities and differences in how teachers navigate emotional challenges and exercise agency. Additionally, since the research was conducted after the pandemic, the teachers’ emotional difficulties may not solely result from online teaching, requiring further investigation in future research.

The findings of this study have pedagogical implications for EFL educators and researchers. Ahn’s case highlights the importance of emotional vulnerability in relation to online teaching and the development of agency. In other words, recognizing and addressing emotional challenges in virtual teaching environments is essential for promoting teacher professionalism, particularly in the pedagogical use of digital technology. To address these, teacher education programs should encompass the emotional dimensions of language teaching and learning so that teacher agency and identity can be enacted in professional and meaningful manners, leading to enhanced student learning outcomes. EFL teachers can also benefit from creating online communities or participating in professional programs for online teaching, where they can share stories, approaches, methods, and digital materials. This not only supports teachers in finding more suitable resources but also strengthens their sense of teacher agency.

Further longitudinal studies in language teacher education are needed to understand and advance online teaching practices while establishing theoretical foundations, particularly in the realm of teacher agency and vulnerability. Additionally, further research should focus on how teachers critically respond to and reflect upon emotional vulnerability in virtual teaching, providing valuable insights into the development of language teacher identities.