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Enjoyment as an Emotional Resource for Pre-service Teacher Persistence in Project-Based Learning
LIU Yuwei
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2025.06.007
Zhaoqing University, Zhaoqing, China
Teacher attrition remains a persistent concern, with decisions about whether to remain in teaching often taking shape during the pre-service phase. While recent quantitative research has identified enjoyment as a key predictor of pre-service teacher persistence, little is known about how enjoyment is experienced and sustained in everyday teaching practice. Addressing this gap, this narrative inquiry explores how enjoyment functions as an emotional resource shaping a pre-service teacher’s desire to persist in teaching during a project-based learning (PBL) practicum. Focusing on the narrative experiences of a pre-service English teacher, Yang, the study draws on semi-structured interviews, emotion diaries, and classroom observations collected over seven weeks. The findings show that enjoyment initially emerged from students’ engagement and visible learning, but became fragile when Yang encountered instructional uncertainty and emotional strain. Through reflective meaning-making, enjoyment was reinterpreted as something that could coexist with difficulty, enabling it to be sustained. The study reconceptualises persistence as a narrative, future-oriented professional orientation shaped through emotional experience.
teacher attrition, teacher emotion
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