Eudaimonic and Hedonic Wellbeing Among ELT Student Teachers: An Ecological Study of Iran's Private Sector

This study advances understanding of teacher wellbeing by examining how pre- and in-service English Language Teaching (ELT) student teachers in Iran's private sector experience flourishing amid systemic precarity. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and using interpretative phenomenological analysis of semi-structured interviews with ten Iranian ELT student teachers, wellbeing is traced across microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem layers. Findings show that immediate classroom interactions, pedagogical confidence, student rapport, and skill cultivation, co-construct hedonic joy and eudaimonic purpose, while mentorship, familial support, institutional autonomy, and resource equity function as key resilience resources at the meso- and exosystem levels. At the macro- and chronosystem levels, socio-economic instability, COVID-19 disruptions, and AI-related anxieties intensify vulnerabilities to classroom monotony, work-life spillover, and market-driven employment uncertainty, particularly for novice teachers. Theoretically, the study extends ecological and wellbeing frameworks by demonstrating how hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions are jointly produced across nested systems in a commercialized ELT context, thereby contributing to contemporary positive psychology. Practically, it identifies multilevel leverage points, such as diversified practicum assignments, structured cross-institute mentorship, fair contractual and policy arrangements, and public campaigns that revalue teaching, that can support more sustainable wellbeing trajectories for ELT student teachers in private-sector settings.