Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
System, cilt.134, 2025 (SSCI, Scopus)
Despite increasing attention to pre-service language teacher wellbeing, a notable gap remains in exploring actionable strategies to promote it in practice. This qualitative case study examined the affordances of virtual exchange (VE) as a pedagogical tool to facilitate wellbeing drawing on the experiences of 28 geographically dispersed trainee teachers of English Language Teaching (ELT) who voluntarily joined a three-week Turkish-Polish VE project. Introduced as an extracurricular initiative, the project involved three tasks completed once a week using various online tools. Informed by the PERMA model of wellbeing, thematic analysis of guided task reflections and focus group interviews revealed an overall positive trend in the participants' wellbeing, as evidenced by their reports of having experienced pleasant emotions, high levels of engagement, satisfactory relationships, and increased sense of meaning and achievement in the shared virtual space. Findings suggest that if carefully designed and supported with ongoing instructional guidance, integrating VE into initial teacher education might serve as a viable means to support wellbeing by cultivating an increased sense of emotional connectedness and empowerment among trainees, which in turn builds a psychologically safe and nurturing learning community. In particular, tasks encouraging self-reflection and aligned with trainees’ shared interests and experiences seem to be ideally suited to support their wellbeing, as they contribute to making the exchange more relevant, meaningful, and engaging. Findings also show that wellbeing does not emerge solely from individual efforts, but manifests itself as socioculturally mediated and collectively determined in VE settings. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.