AI as a collaborator: pre-service teachers’ perspectives on preparing multimodal language lessons

This study examines pre-service English teachers’ lived experiences of using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for multimodal lesson planning. Conducted within a six-week, technology-enhanced pedagogy course in a postgraduate teacher education programme in Hong Kong, the study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis drawing on classroom observations, AI-generated artefacts, and reflective interviews. The findings portray a developmental trajectory in which participants advanced from tentative experimentation toward more confident and critical use of GenAI. Three themes were identified. First, ‘GenAI as a collaborative multimodal lesson design partner’ showed how participants orchestrated heterogeneous tools to create differentiated and multimodal resources. Second, ‘negotiating authorship and professional identity’ revealed ambivalence about originality and creative ownership but also a shift from template adoption to adaptive curation, contextualisation, and principled integration. Third, ‘navigating challenges and ethical boundaries’ highlighted how participants acted as cultural and factual mediators while modelling responsible and transparent AI use to foster critical AI literacy among learners. Framed by the PedAIComp framework, the results show movement from Awareness and Exploration to Integration and, in some practices, Expertise and emerging Leadership. While Innovation was not reached within the intervention, the study points to future opportunities for professional development and collaborative design research to cultivate Innovation competences.