In the absence of official guidelines and institutional strategies, teachers around the world have been left largely to make sense of generative AI (genAI) tools for themselves. We present empirical work from teachers across six Swedish and Australian schools to illustrate the complex ways in which staff are beginning to work with genAI tools – pointing to the influence of pedagogical knowledge, professional self-understandings, contextual awareness, values and emotions.

On one hand, these teachers’ circumspect approaches might be celebrated as ensuring that genAI tools complement (rather than compromise) key tenets of public education and the standing of the expert teacher. On the other hand, we also consider what might risk becoming lost through these interactions, and the benefits of supporting broader workforce-wide conversations that develop shared understandings around the roles that these new technologies should be allowed to play in contemporary schooling.

Neil Selwyn is a distinguished professor at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, and is internationally recognised as a leading researcher within the field of digital education. He is currently guest professor at the department of educational sciences where he leads the project ‘Teachers and teaching in the age of AI and digital automation’.