“Grow like sea anemones”: A collaborative autoethnography of emotions and professional identity formation of two teacher-researchers specializing in computer-assisted language learning

Responding to the identity and emotional challenges faced by language educators in the digital era, this collaborative autoethnography examines the decade-long professional identity formation and emotions of two Chinese computer-assisted language learning (CALL) teacher-researchers. Grounded in communities of practice and dialectical emotion theories, the study explores the two CALL teacher-researchers’ emotions during boundary-crossing practices between applied linguistics and educational technology studies, using interviews, journals, and CVs as data sources. Their identity is metaphorized as a sea anemone: a stable core as language teachers with tentacles reaching for new technologies. Findings reveal that both positive and negative emotions drove identity development, with increasing emotional complexity signifying maturity, challenging the common Western scholarly focus on positive emotions in identity formation. We propose a Dialectical Identity-Emotion Model (DIEM) from an East Asian perspective. The study holds important implications for how we can better support educators by preparing them for their increasingly transdisciplinary roles.