Abstract
Burnout is a prevalent occurrence in the field of education, influencing the well-being and effectiveness of teachers. Teachers who are themselves plurilingual constitute a distinctive case within the broader professional field, mobilising their own plurilingual facility that, depending on context, might enhance or inhibit their pedagogical effectiveness, thereby potentially contributing to longer-term teacher retention or attrition. This chapter presents an exploratory case study of the professional placement experiences of a group of international pre-service teachers. Data were drawn from the critical reflections of the course coordinator, informed by input from the coordinators of two other courses with large proportions of international students. These reflections were analysed both deductively and inductively and also thematically and were informed by the conceptual interplay between plurilingualism and occupational burnout. The chapter’s findings are used to extend theoretical understandings of the intersection between plurilingualism and teacher burnout, and also to elicit pedagogically sound and practically effective coping strategies that individuals and institutions alike can enact to render such burnout less rather than more likely.
