SARAH MERCER

Professor, Researcher, Educator

Sarah Mercer is a Professor for Foreign Language Teaching and the Head of the ELT Research and Methodology Department at the University of Graz. Find out more about her research projects, publications, and upcoming events on this website.

Link to the book

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Compassion-based Language Education

Compassion-based Language Education proposes that the purpose of language education should be to have compassion at its core. Students should be encouraged to generate ideas and take action in their local and global communities, and all this can be achieved through the medium of English. Learning to communicate and connect with the world around them should be education's goal for students today, and there are plenty of useful activities throughout Compassion-based Language Education to help teachers towards this achievable goal.

The main themes in this book include:

Teacher-learner relationships that embody trust, care and inclusivity
Social-emotional learning and empathy among learners
Teaching self-compassion and wellbeing literacy
Compassion for others, including global citizenship education and social justice
Eco literacy, sustainable living and compassion for the natural world.

Reference: Mercer, S. (2025). Compassion-based Language Education (EPUB). Oxford University Press..

RECENT ACADEMIC PAPERS

The choreography of engagement in the language classroom: Exploring the dynamic interplay between learner and teacher engagement

Sarah Mercer & Giulia Sulis

While a growing body of research has focused on learner engagement, teacher engagement remains largely underresearched. The purpose of this study is to examine how the engagement of teachers and learners develops in real-time throughout three English language lessons, and how they interrelate over time. Participants in the study were six students from one fourth-year English class at an Austrian middle school and their teacher. Experience Sampling Method (ESM) data were collected through the M-Path app which prompted learners and their teacher to chart their real-time levels of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement at 7-minute intervals throughout three English lessons. ESM data were complemented by classroom observations, video-audio recordings of the lessons, and stimulated recall interviews cued by ESM data for both teacher and learners. Findings revealed the dynamic and multifaceted nature of learner and teacher engagement, and their complex reciprocal interactions.

The study highlights revealed that learner and teacher engagement were highly dynamic over time, with their behavioral engagement often following a seesaw trajectory. Moreover, the interplay between teacher and learner engagement varied across different dimensions of engagement, such as emotional and cognitive aspects.

Reference: Sulis, G, & Mercer, S. (2024). The choreography of engagement in the language classroom: Exploring the dynamic interplay between learner and teacher engagement. Learning and Individual Differences, 117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2024.102586

Link to the article

Understanding the Well-Being Literacy of EFL Learners: Towards a Framework of Learners’ Knowledge and Skills

Sarah Mercer, Dávid Smid, Carlos Murillo-Miranda & Miri Tashma Baum

Well-being has been recognized as a basic human right, a core determinant of success in education, and a skill that can be developed. In language education, the literature suggests that higher well-being is likely to lead to more classroom engagement and ultimately greater success for learners. For English language teachers, there is a need to understand what learners know about well-being, what kinds of support they feel they need, and how best to integrate such support into regular language teaching practice. This paper reports on a qualitative study using focus group data that set out to understand the well-being literacy of a group of 42 Austrian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in their final year of school. The findings reveal five categories in which learners demonstrated knowledge of well-being: conceptual understanding of well-being, factors impacting well-being, coping strategies, the role of systemic factors, and issues in the English language teaching context specifically. Based on analysis of these data, we present an initial practical framework for evaluating and guiding EFL student well-being literacy development.

Reference: Smid, D., Mercer, S., Murillo-Miranda, C., & Tashma Baum, M. (2024). Understanding the Well-being Literacy of EFL Learners: Towards a Framework of Learners’ Knowledge and Skills. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 80(4). https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr-2023-0049

Link to the article