Narrative of emotion labor and agency through translanguaging pedagogy in the lives of teachers in multilingual education: from an ecological perspective

Although teacher emotion has received growing scholarly attention, limited research has examined how teachers emotionally respond to teaching multilingual students through translanguaging pedagogy. More importantly, research on the emotional experiences of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL) teachers in Chinese-medium instruction remains particularly scarce. To address this gap, guided by ecological theory, this study investigates how TCSOL teachers experience emotion labor when implementing translanguaging pedagogy, how they exercise agency to navigate emotional challenges, and what pedagogical practices they employ. Conducted in China with three TCSOL teachers, data were collected through narrative inquiry, visual methods, narrative interviews, and classroom observations. The findings reveal three ecological narratives of emotion labor: (1) Micro: teaching as wearing a mask; (2) Meso: teaching as walking a tightrope; (3) Macro: teaching as talking to a brick wall. By framing emotion labor as an agentive process, the study illustrates how TCSOL teachers adopt innovative practices, including Generative-AI tools and multimodal strategies, to cope with emotion labor. The research delineates the entangled interconnectedness of emotion labor, translanguaging pedagogy and agency across three ecologies. This study offers practical insights to support TCSOL teachers in managing emotional challenges and promoting educational equity in multilingual classrooms.