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.