Living Through Emotional/Cognitive Dissonance: An Autoethnographic Exploration of a Novice Chinese Languages Other Than English (LOTE) Teacher's First‐Year Perezhivaniya

ABSTRACT Contemporary educational research has increasingly recognized the importance of emotions in teacher's professional development trajectories. However, limited research has explored how specific emotional/cognitive dissonance faced by novice university teachers can be transformed into growth points, particularly in the Chinese context. Drawing on an autoethnographic approach and Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie, this study traces the first author's understanding and internalization of the psychological conflicts inherent in his professional roles during his first year of teaching. The findings reveal both positive and negative perezhivaniya in his daily work, in which moments of emotional/cognitive dissonance often serve as critical growth points in teacher's professional development. The study highlights a novice LOTE teacher's complex emotional experiences in relation to contradictions with (1) mediating tools of online teaching technologies, (2) community of students and foreign co‑teacher, and (3) rules of academic publication. Across these dimensions, perezhivanie functions as a dynamic, transformative process that links emotion, cognition, and context, turning dissonant experiences into opportunities for conceptual and identity development. In so doing, the study extends understandings of teacher emotional/cognitive dissonance in higher education and offers implications for supporting novice teachers’ wellbeing and growth within China's evolving academic culture.