This study aims to investigate how pre-service teachers’ perception of teacher student interaction in a classroom with creative problem-solving pedagogy. The effectiveness of teaching relies significantly on how teachers communicate and how teachers and students interact. One of the ways to facilitate teacher-student interaction is by using creative problem-solving (CPS), which incorporates creativity into teaching. Although integrating CPS enriches the range of learning interaction in the classrooms, the teacher-student interaction within the university EFL context is insufficiently explored. Applying the theory of Initiation-response feedback (IRF) with qualitative research method, this study tries to discover how CPS facilitates teacher-student interaction patterns in an EFL classroom in a state university in Indonesia. The classroom comprises 46 pre-service teachers (ages 19-24) participating in the Material Development course. The data collection methods employed deep interviews and classroom observation. The results showed that implementing CPS in EFL classrooms positively fostered communicative classroom interactions. The results showed that implementing CPS in EFL classrooms positively fostered communicative classroom interactions. Although pre-service teachers find CPS challenging, they showed high intention to implement CPS in their future careers.
