Unveiling teachers’ emotional landscape and professional development in a long-term collaborative teaching contest: a bioecological perspective

Due to the inherently emotional nature of the educational environment, the examination of teachers’ emotions has consistently held a significant position within the academic realms of education. In China, teaching contests have emerged as a pivotal avenue for promoting teachers’ educational competence and professional development. However, research unveiling teachers’ emotional landscape within this context remains relatively rare. Therefore, this qualitative case study adopts Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory as its theoretical framework to examine the emotional dynamics, influencing factors, and professional development of two EFL teachers engaged in a collaborative team-based teaching competition over an 8-month period. The study reveals that teachers’ emotions in this competitive setting underwent dynamic changes, encompassing positive and negative aspects; internal individual characteristics and the external ecological environment had different impacts on the teachers’ emotions. The rich, intricate, and fluctuating emotions sparked by teaching contests positively contributed to fostering teachers’ professional development and strengthening team collaboration. This study advances current understanding about why and how emotions initiate teachers’ development, aiming to provide some implications and insights for teacher emotion research and teacher education studies.