Investigating the link between perceived teacher happiness and student affective outcomes: A mixed-methods study in the Chinese EFL context.

Situated within positive psychology in applied linguistics, research on language teacher emotions has increasingly explored how positive psychological factors shape language learning and teaching experiences. However, replication research is needed to establish the robustness of findings on teacher happiness and student outcomes across diverse contexts. This mixed-methods study examined Chinese university EFL students' perceptions of teacher happiness and its associations with students' affective outcomes in a single-nationality context. Data were collected from 637 students and analysed through correlation analyses, multiple regression, and dominance analysis to investigate relationships between three components of perceived teacher happiness and two student outcomes: Overall attitudes and motivation, and Attitudes towards the teacher. Follow-up interviews provided contextual interpretations of the quantitative results. The findings largely replicated previous research by showing positive associations between perceived teacher happiness and students' affective outcomes. However, the relative contributions of teacher-happiness components differed, with teacher enjoyment/fun in life showing the strongest association with both outcomes in this sample. Qualitative findings revealed that students perceived teacher happiness through teachers' emotional expressions, classroom practices, and interpersonal behaviors. The study highlights teacher happiness as a contextually situated and relational construct shaped by classroom interactions and contributes to replication research on language teacher emotions through an integrated quantitative and qualitative approach.