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Article History

Received: 28 March 2025

Accepted: 12 February 2026

First Online: 24 February 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of School of Foreign Languages at Shenzhen Technology University, China. The Institutional Ethics Committee assesses whether research involving human participants complies with the committee’s regulations and safeguards the rights and interests of the research subjects. Ethics approval number: SZTUSFLYXLL2022008, provides ethical consent for all qualitative research conducted with tenure-track scholars in China. Date of ethical approval of the research line: 28-02-2022. Ethical approval duration: 28-02-2022 until 28-02-2027. The ethical approval covered the collection of interview data with tenure-track university teachers and the subsequent use of deidentified data (transcripts) for publication and reporting purposes.

: This study involves collecting interview data from human participants. Prior to each interview, participants were provided with an informed consent form, which they read carefully and signed before the interview commenced. This form explained the purpose of the research, the interview procedure, and how their data would be handled. Using the informed consent form, the interviewer obtained written consent from each participant. The interviewer explained the content of the consent form and answered any questions before the participant signed the document. Participants were informed that, and by signing, consented to: The interview would be audio-recorded and transcribed. The audio recordings would be deleted after the interview was transcribed. Their participation was voluntary, and they could withdraw at any time without consequence. All data would be anonymized and treated confidentially. The data would be used solely for academic research purposes. The data would be used anonymously for publication purposes. The data would be securely stored. Finally, directly before the start of the interview, all participants were asked whether they understood what they had read, signed the informed consent form, and then provided additional oral consent before the interview began. Informed consent was obtained from August 25, 2024 to January 20, 2025. The study qualifies as non-interventional social science research and poses no foreseeable risks to participants.