The contemporary STEAM teacher education environment involves high uncertainty (Kim, Bolger, 2020), constant variability (Suh, Park, 2020; Vasquez et al, 2020), and emotional intensity (Jamil, Herro, 2021). Every workday teachers are faced with situations in which they must make quick decisions, respond to emotions, maintain students’ engagement, and remain professionally stable. Hargreaves (1998), Fullan (2001) noted that in such conditions subject or methodological knowledge is no longer sufficient. Recent studies confirm that STEAM teachers face additional pressures related to interdisciplinary integration, technological complexity, and identity negotiation (Kim,Bolger, 2020; Jamil,Herro, 2021). Effective teaching requires the ability to maintain emotional balance and adapt to complex, often unpredictable situations (Day, 2004; Masten, 2014). For these reasons emotional resilience is becoming an essential part of professional competence, especially in STEAM education, where experimentation, technological disruption, and intense emotional dynamics of students are commonplace. Emotional resilience in teaching is understood as an evolving, context-sensitive, and relational process that is shaped through experience, social interaction, and reflection (Gu, Day, 2013; Beltman, et al, 2011). As Masten (2001) notes, resilience comes from “the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources” (p. 227), suggesting that the capacity to adapt in challenging circumstances is rooted in typical, rather than extraordinary, human strengths. Ungar (2012) conceptualizes resilience as an ecological process which depends not only on environmental, community, and social resources but also on individuals’ capacity to navigate and negotiate these resources within their specific contexts. These perspectives suggest that emotional resilience is a learned competency that requires real, emotionally authentic experiences. However, most traditional teacher education models do not provide such experiences. They often rely on simulations, theoretical exercises or tightly controlled practices and partially reflect the real emotional complexity of STEAM education (Beltman et al., 2011). This gap is also evident in STEAM‑specific teacher preparation, where professional development often focuses on content integration rather than emotional demands (Suh,Park, 2020; Vasquez et.al, 2020). As a result, teachers often face a gap between what they have learned and what they experience in real classrooms. Emotional situations become a challenge as there was simply no room for them in the training process. This reveals a methodological issue: teacher education lacks a practice-based model integrating the development of emotional resilience in a real context, combining theory, practice and reflection. The Living Lab could hepl as is based on the principles of real context, co-creation, stakeholder orientation and iterative process (Leminen et.al, 2012; Steen, van Bueren, 2017). In such environments, teachers can operate in real, emotionally complex situations, reflect on their experiences, collaborate with others, and develop emotional resilience in practice, not only to learn theory. Vartiainen et al. (2020) showed that Living Lab-type environments promote inquiry-based learning, technological literacy, co-creation, and reflection, i.e. competencies that directly contribute to strengthening emotional resilience. The first empirical data from the Lithuanian EDUTECH STEAM Center confirms these insights: Living Lab environments allow teachers to design and test STEAM activities in real classrooms, while strengthening their pedagogical and emotional resilience competencies (Melnikova et al. 2023). We argue for the necessity of conceptual model explaining how the Living Lab methodology can be integrated into STEAM teacher education programs. The problem question seeks to understand how the Living Lab principals can be applied in STEAM teacher education to foster emotional resilience. Seeking the goal, tasks are solved: 1) to reveal the emotional challenges posed by the STEAM educational context for teachers; 2) to reveal the potential of the Living Lab principles for teacher education; 3) to create a conceptual model integrating the principles of Living Lab into the development of emotional resilience in STEAM teacher education.

This conceptual study employs a theoretical and analytical methodology aimed at developing a model that explains how Living Lab principles can be integrated into STEAM teacher education to foster emotional resilience. The analytical strategy follows a conceptual synthesis approach, integrating three vectors of literature: emotional resilience theory, Living Lab methodology, and STEAM teacher education research. This enables a coherent examination of how emotional resilience can be fostered within authentic, iterative, and collaborative learning environments. We use a scoping literature analysis seeking to identify the main emotional challenges teachers face in STEAM contexts. During this step we identify the emotional demands arising in dynamic, technology-rich, and experimentation‑intensive environments and highlight why emotional resilience is a necessary component of teachers’ professional competence. Insights from resilience research (Masten, 2014; Ungar, 2012; Day, Gu, 2014, ect) are examined to distinguish ecological, relational, and pedagogical dimensions of resilience relevant for teacher education. We analyze Living Lab literature (Leminen et al., 2012; Steen & van Bueren, 2017, 2021) to identify how real‑life context, co‑creation, stakeholder orientation, and iterative processes align with processes that support emotional resilience, such as adaptive functioning, reflective practice, and relational support. Employing a design‑based reasoning, which supports the conceptualization of how Living Lab environments can be embedded into teacher education programs, we are modelling learning processes in which theory, practice, and reflection form a continuous cycle and mirror the iterative, real‑world learning dynamics characteristic of both Living Lab environments and resilience development. Drawing on above mentioned conceptual analysis, design‑based reasoning, and empirical synthesis, we present a conceptual model demonstrating how Living Lab methodology can be enabled in STEAM teacher education aiming to develop emotionally resilient, reflective, and adaptive pedagogical competence.

The main outcome is a conceptual model that integrates Living Lab principles into STEAM teacher education seeking to support the development of emotionally resilient, reflective, and adaptive teachers. The model demonstrates the relationship between three interrelated elements. First, it highlights the emotional resilience that STEAM teachers need to develop in dynamic, technology-rich, and experimental environments. Second, the model identifies which of Living Lab principles can directly contribute to developing these emotional resilience skills. Third, the model shows how this development occurs during process: how theory, practice, and reflection come together in a coherent learning cycle, and how this cycle can be integrated into STEAM teacher education programs. Thus, the model reveals not only what needs to be developed and the principles that can help to achieve this. Moreover, how this process can be practically implemented in teacher education. A model could help to develop the emotionally resilient, reflective, and adaptive pedagogical competence that today’s teachers demand more than ever. As a result, this research contributes to the field by offering a theoretically grounded and practically oriented framework that addresses a critical gap in teacher education. It provides a foundation for future empirical research and offers teacher education institutions a pathway to strengthen emotional resilience within STEAM programs.

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