Language teacher emotions have been increasingly studied through a poststructuralist lens, with research revealing that power dynamics shape teachers' emotional experiences and identities. While prior studies have acknowledged the reciprocal relationship between emotions and identity, there is limited research on how power relations and external judgment mediate the way teachers negotiate their identities through emotion labour. To address this research gap, the present study was conducted in a Chinese as an additional language (CAL) context to examine how the 'gazes' of others shaped teachers' emotion labour and how their emotion labour interacted with their identity construction. Data were collected from two novice CAL teachers working at a Chinese learning institution via semi-structured interviews and observational field notes. The findings revealed that gazes from the director, the mentor, students, teaching assistants, and colleagues generated participants' emotional tensions. In negotiating the tensions, they enacted different forms of emotion labour, which contributed to their distinct identity trajectories. Meanwhile, both participants internalised institutional norms and reproduced similar gazes toward peers.
An et al. (Fri,) studied this question.