Exploring English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Instructors’ Digital Agency through Emotional Labour on a Learning Management System in a Post-Secondary Context

Abstract

Teachers' digital agency (DA), defined as their capacity to act purposefully to address challenges in online instruction, has been increasingly linked to the dynamic interplay between personal skills and the digitally mediated environments. Within this context, emotional labour (EL) can be seen as a regulatory process and as a resource through which DA is enacted. Building on this perspective, the present study explores how instructors mobilise EL as part of their agentic responses in online English teaching on a learning management system (LMS). The study draws on data from 30 Turkish instructors affiliated with a state university, collected through an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that negative emotions (NEs) were more prevalent and often associated with their incompetence in exercising EL, which in turn constrained the enactment of DA. These results underscore the role of emotional processes in shaping agentic action and the need for strengthening teachers’ digital and pedagogical capacities. The study concludes by outlining implications for future research directions.