Generative or Degenerative?! Implications of AI Tools in Pre-Service Teacher Education and Reflections on Instructors’ Professional Development

Despite existing research on AI applications in education (AIEd), the release of ChatGPT has disrupted the status quo in the educational landscape. Although this technology can personalize learning, decrease teacher workload, and offer access to a wealth of information, concerns around generative AI (GenAI) tools have emerged, including academic integrity, data accuracy, and bias in information. Given research highlights and acknowledging educators’ varied levels of awareness and conflicting views toward AIEd, two teacher educators (also authors of this paper) in the Faculty of Education at Brock University facilitated three workshops among different groups of teacher educators. The workshops focused on the emerging nature of GenAI tools, their affordances, and their implications for educators’ practices. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, the authors describe the details of these workshops and present their reflections on the process of preparing for and facilitating them. Implications for teacher education research and practice are also presented and discussed.Keywords: artificial intelligence (AI), artificial intelligence in education (AIEd), teacher education, professional development, generative AI (GenAI)