The chronicle experience of stress in an educational setting has concerning aftermaths such as teachers’ attrition and burnout, and up to half of the teachers abandon their job in the first five years of their professional life or during their career before retirement. Irrespective of the sources, teachers’ occupational stress resulting in several reverberations such as language teacher attrition can have traumatic impacts such as a shortage of teachers in any educational system. Therefore, recognizing those factors and strategies employed by EFL teachers to sustain effectively while maintaining instructional equilibrium is of great help to lead more productive teaching and healthy life.  Language Teacher Immunity defined as a protection mechanism developed by language teachers over their career is among those factors assisting teachers to deal with daily hassles typical of the language teaching environment and thrive despite adverse conditions of a classroom setting. In line with such a stance, and to fill the literature gap, the present study aimed at discovering EFL teachers’ level of occupational stress and their immunity type, either productive or maladaptive. Additionally, an attempt was made to examine whether there are any relationships between teachers’ stress levels and the type of immunity they developed over their careers. Applying a quantitative approach and convenience sampling, the data were collected from in-service English language teachers (N=204) working in both private and public language schools in West/East Azerbaijan, Iran.  The data were collected through two validated and localized questionnaires to be administered electronically. The initial analysis revealed that more than forty per cent of teachers find their profession stressful in one way or another, while men were more stressed than women. There is a positive correlation between the level of occupational stress and developing maladaptive teacher immunity. While experience correlates positively with both stress level and the development of positive immunity, other biographical differences showed no significant effects. Implications have been made to language teachers, curriculum designers, educational policymakers as well as institutions which can be of help to improve the EFL teachers' general well-being and teaching environment.

Applying convenience sampling, a total number of 204 in-service EFL teachers working in both public and private sectors were recruited. The rationale behind opting for in-service EFL teachers was to take account of the current conditions typical of English language classes in the context of Iran. The idea of including both private and public schools was formulated to have a comparison between the two groups and take control over the related variable. The participants were drawn based on their willingness from English language centers, high schools, and universities located in West-Azerbaijan, East-Azerbaijan, and Ardebil provinces in Iran. Participants were recruited exclusively among EFL teachers falling into different age groups, L1 backgrounds, experience, and governmental and private institutions. Instruments Teacher Immunity scale (TIS): EFL teachers’ immunity type was distinguished utilizing a tool adapted from Hiver (2017). The questionnaire includes 39 items on a 7-point Likert scale., compromising 7 subscales namely self-efficacy (7 items), burnout (5 items), resilience (5 items), attitudes towards teaching (6 items), openness to change (6 items), classroom effectivity (5 items), and coping (5 items). The reported reliability indices of all the subscales in the study of Hiver (2017), presented successively, were at an acceptable level; α = 0.82, 0.80, 0.82, 0.85, 0.74, 0.81, 0.78. In our study, the reliability of the TIS estimated via Cronbach’s alpha was 0.85. Teachers Stress Scale (TSS) Teachers’ stress level was measured through a tailor-made 5-point Likert scale questionnaire adapted from Sadeghi & Saadatpour (2016). The initial questionnaire included 46 items (Alpha: 0.95). Following consultation with similar studies, some experts, and practicing teachers, 72 items were listed, and the feedback from the pilot test (N=153) and the subsequent analysis led to the final questionnaire with 50 items falling into 8 factors, namely Interpersonal Relationship (4 items), Students Behavior (7 items), Sociocultural (5 items), Proficiency & Knowledge (5 items), Facilities and Resources (7 items), Workload (7 items), Employment Structure (9 items), and Institutional Setting (6 items). Procedure: For data collection, the electronic survey forms were designed in Qualtrics. First language schools were approached and based on the management the study was announced in the school social media group. A survey link was shared in the group and teachers interested teachers could respond to the questionnaires anonymously. Before moving further with responding to the questionnaire, the participants we required to consent to participate in the study.

In addressing the first research question regarding whether EFL teachers experience any levels of stress, The present investigation that nearly half of EFL teachers reported some feelings of stress, among which around one-third seemed to report being extremely or very stressed respectively. Among 8 factors measuring the level of stress, students’ behavior and employment structure are expected to be the factors with the highest impact, while Facilities and resources were the least influential factor. Among items of the questionnaire, Inadequate salary and job security seems to be the most influential stressors among all 50 items. Biographical characteristics of teachers played no role in the level of stress perceived by teachers, except for gender. Male teachers were a bit more stressed than their female counterparts. Regarding immunity, the productive form was dominant among teachers and only around one-third of teachers were characterized by maladaptive immunity type. Like teachers’ stress, there were no significant differences considering the participants' personal traits such as age, gender, experience, and educational background. In order to provide an answer to the second research question as to the possible relationship between job-related stress and the type of immunity developed by EFL teachers, a Spearman’s rho correlation was run, the results of which showed that more stressed teachers developed a productive form of immunity (p ≤ 0.05) while teachers with lower levels of stress manifested its maladaptive form, which can imply that stress can act as a motivator in developing a positive variant of immunity.

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