VISUALISING TEACHER ANXIETY AND IDENTITY IN THE SOUTH KOREAN CONTEXT

Abstract

In South Korea, elementary school teachers are increasingly experiencing anxiety due to intensified emotional labor, heightened parental expectations, and shifting sociocultural perceptions of the teaching profession. While prior research has examined teacher stress from psychological and institutional perspectives, less attention has been given to how anxiety is expressed and interpreted through multimodal and reflective practices within specific sociocultural contexts. This study explores how teachers visualize and reflect upon their anxiety through art-based expression and dialogue, and how these processes relate to their professional identity. Adopting a qualitative multimodal design, the study integrates narrative inquiry, visual analysis, and dialogic interaction. Four in-service elementary school teachers participated in structured art-based activities and reflective dialogues. Data were collected from visual artworks, reflective writings, and recorded dialogues, and analyzed using thematic analysis with multimodal integration. The findings indicate that participants’ anxiety is shaped by external expectations, emotional suppression, and identity-related tensions. The limitations of this study include the small sample size (n = 4) and the exploratory nature of the research, both of which limit the transferability of the findings.  Therefore, the interpretations presented here should be understood as context-specific insights rather than generalizable conclusions. Art-based expression functioned as a reflective medium, enabling participants to externalize and reinterpret their emotional experiences, while dialogue facilitated shared understanding and relational meaning-making. Rather than generalizing beyond the study context, the findings provide insight into how anxiety is experienced and negotiated within a specific sociocultural setting. This study contributes methodologically by demonstrating the value of integrating visual and dialogic approaches in qualitative research on emotional and identity-related phenomena. It also suggests implications for teacher education and professional development by highlighting the importance of reflective and expressive practices.