Abstract:
The rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has caused fears that the rise of AI ‘agency’ will threaten human agency. Therefore, this study explores the development of preservice languages teachers’ transformative agency during their interaction with a range of GenAI, including ChatGPT, Bing Image and AI voice-over generators. This study adopts a formative intervention design within the Cultural Historical Activity Theory. The task and responses from GenAI functioned as the first stimulus that provoked a series of conflicts of motives. The second stimulus included iterative group evaluation of the prompts. The participants were. Data were collected from a group of preservice languages teachers from an Australian university over 4 weeks, including 3 recorded intervention sessions and one focus group interview (total of 140 mins). Coding the 410 learning actions in the participants-AI interaction revealed that the participants demonstrated an increasing agency in taking the learning into their hands with a deviation from the pre-designed task. The object of their activity expanded from the concrete skills of using GenAI to a more conceptual level of teachers’ role in the age of AI. The formative intervention design enhanced the participants’ interdisciplinary learning by integrating their knowledge of the curriculum, subject content, and ethical and professional uses of digital technologies. This study conceptualises teacher-GenAI interaction from a dialectical view that teachers are not only mediated by technology but also can take ownership of their situation by making changes. Regarding teacher professional learning, the formative intervention provides a model for integrating GenAI into teacher education programmes with a context-specific, content-based and work-related design.