ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Variable Co-adaptation: Exploring the Emergence of Teacher-Student Interaction Patterns in Award-Winning EFL Classes through the CDST Lens
Binfeng Chen
Weining Zhang
Yihan Xie
College of Zhicheng, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
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Abstract
Teacher-student interaction (TSI) is key to effective foreign language learning (FLT), yet its linguistic-cognitive dynamics remain understudied through a non-linear systems lens. Notably, language teaching contests like the SFLEP Cup with consistent students and rotating teachers naturally form complex dynamic systems. Considering this uniqueness, this study applied Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) to 10 award-winning teachers' 20-minute lessons (including 3-minute teaching-design and 17-minute in-class teaching-demos, yielding 315 question-answer pairs), using State Space Grids (SSGs) to visualize TSI dynamics and code linguistic and cognitive levels from videos. Findings revealed teachers' adaptive variability converged into a dominant pattern: simple elicitation questions paired with concise student answers, marked by low cognitive demand. The findings also revealed how these global patterns emerged from individual teachers. The study thus calls for integrating cognitively challenging interactions into FLT and refining contest evaluation criteria, addressing a pressing need to elevate TSI quality amid evolving educational landscapes.
Summary
Keywords
CDST, co-adaptation, emergence, Teacher-student interaction, teaching contest, variability
Received
08 January 2026
Accepted
18 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Chen, Zhang and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Binfeng Chen
Disclaimer
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