Probing language teacher creativity and its interplay with emotions in lesson study projects

This study examines how language teacher creativity emerges and interacts with emotions in university–school collaborative lesson study (LS) projects in China. Drawing on sociocultural theory, it conceptualizes creativity as a socially mediated and emotionally infused learning process. Using a qualitative design, it collected multiple sources of data from LS cycles through interviews, reflections, collective discussions, teaching documents, and classroom observations.

The thematic analysis revealed four interconnected manifestations of language teacher creativity and a fifth theme illustrating the dual role of emotions in enabling and constraining creative practice. Findings show that creativity is negotiated between structure and freedom, emotionally regulated through both integral and context-contingent emotions, and mediated by language content as a key resource for pedagogical innovation. The study reconceptualizes emotions beyond a positive–negative dichotomy and highlights the pedagogical role of language content.

It suggests that teacher educators (TEs) balance structure and autonomy, attend to power dynamics, and harness emotions constructively to foster teacher creativity. Sincere thanks go to all the participants for their kind support. Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang, China The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics Approval: All procedures in this study adhere to the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. At the time of data collection, the School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Beijing Normal University, did not have a dedicated institutional ethics committee; ethical clearance was granted by the School’s Professor Committee. Informed consent was obtained from all participants after explaining the study purpose, procedures, voluntary participation, confidentiality assurances, and the use of anonymized data.

Participants retained the right to withdraw at any time without penalty. Informed consent was obtained from all participating teachers and the legal guardians of all participating children included in the study. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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