Yesterday, my colleague at RMUTT in Thailand, Matthew Noble and I put up a preprint on Edarxiv in preparation for a symposium we will attend in November on Mental Health in ELT. Yes, it seems to be rather niche; however, we feel that there is less a gap in the literature on language teacher psychology and more of a yawning chasm regarding neurodivergent teachers. In our own way, we want to change this.
By exploring our own experiences of TEFL, we get to show how the profession impacts our lives and also how our lives affect our professional practice. We figure that if 7.1% (Thomas et al, 2019) of the population are estimated to have ADHD, yet one of the symptoms is being attracted to novel situations and being in the moment rather than considering past experiences or future implications, then there are likely a lot of colleagues with ADHD, potentially more than the 7.1%.
Update
This is now an article in JALT Teacher Development SIG’s Explorations in Teacher Development journal. You can find it here.
References
Thomas, R., Sanders, S., Doust, J., Beller, E., & Glasziou, P. (2015). Prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 135(4), e994–e1001. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-3482