Promoting Critical Perspectives of Language Learning Representations: Interrogating AI-Generated Images in a Pre-Service Teacher Education Course

This qualitative research study examines how an Artificial Intelligence image generating assignment supported and enhanced preservice teachers’ critical multilingual language awareness and technoskeptical views towards technology. The study took place in a university-based language education course for preservice teachers preparing to work with English language learners. Drawing on multimodal analysis of Artificial Intelligence images that preservice teachers generated based on prompts they gave Artificial Intelligence image models, and critical discourse analysis of their reflective writing about their learning on the assignment, findings indicate how the learning task shaped preservice teachers’ learning about Artificial Intelligence outputs and the trade‑offs of its pedagogical use. Analysis of preservice teachers’ generated images suggests that while the Artificial Intelligence image models were able to depict features common to language learning students, classroom settings or spaces of learning, their outputs were limited in their ability to accurately capture the human components shaping language teaching and learning.