Generative AI as a Mirror: Educators Exploring and Challenging Dominant Discourses about the Future of AI in Education

Abstract

This study explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teacher education and the challenges educators face in gaining agency and understanding of AI implementation. Focusing on the concept of discursive closure, it investigates how educators envision the future of AI in education (AIed) and the implications of dominant discourses in their perceptions about the future, but also about its integration today. The study reveals educators' perceptions and the limitations of current narratives about AIed. It uncovers deterministic, trajectoristic, and simplistic binary views that tend to overshadow educators' roles and diminish their sense of agency in classrooms today. Additionally, through a speculative exercise employing a generative AI tool, the study showcases how educators interpret and make sense of these dominant discourses while envisioning educational futures, thereby exposing the normative assumptions ingrained in AIed today. The study emphasizes the need for educators' critical engagement with AI technologies to envision alternative discourses and shape more democratic educational futures for themselves and their communities.