iranian efl teachers’ coping strategies in face of technostress: the mediating role of grit

Teaching is often regarded as one of the most challenging professions and language teachers have always been facing various obstacles and stressors. with the global outbreak of coronavirus, online teaching became an obligation that many teachers had not experienced before. working with technology introduced new challenges to teachers which affected their performance in the classroom. thus, technostress, known as the negative psychological effect of using new technologies, became a new stressor experienced by language teachers. while the factors leading to technostress have received attention in the language teaching literature in the past years, identifying its related coping strategies has not been given much consideration. therefore, the present study aimed to investigate english as a foreign language (efl) teachers’ coping strategies in face of technostress, taking into account the mediating role of grit. data was collected through interviews with 16 iranian efl teachers and analyzed through thematic analysis. all the participants had first experienced online teaching during the pandemic and had received satisfactory evaluation ratings from their students. the results of thematic analysis indicated that the teachers’ choice of coping strategies contributed to their sense of grit, which gave them the passion and perseverance to overcome the stress resulting from online teaching. in addition, the findings revealed that efl teachers’ approach coping strategies played a more significant role in reducing their technostress than their avoidance coping strategies. in other words, teachers’ strategies which were directed towards solving the technological problems they faced were more effective in decreasing their distress than what they did to avoid the problems. finally, implications for online teaching in the post-covid era were discussed and suggestions for further research were provided.