Pincolini

• AI tools in foreign language education
• Teacher education and professional development
• Digital literacy in EFL classrooms

Fostering Critical AI Literacy among Pre-Service English Teachers

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Maria Eisenmann, Prof. Dr. Theresa Summer, Prof. Dr. Christian Ludwig

Artificial intelligence is profoundly transforming both everyday life and professional practice, bringing significant changes to how we learn and teach. Teachers are now required to navigate these new digital realities with professional and ethical awareness. To prepare future educators for this transformation, teacher education must foster competences that enable critical and reflective engagement with AI.

This dissertation explores how pre-service English teachers can develop such competences. It combines theoretical model development with an integrative literature review to conceptualize what Critical AI Literacy means in teacher education, particularly in material development. A university seminar on materials development with AI is designed and implemented to investigate how pre-service teachers engage with AI in authentic teaching contexts. It integrates theory, application, and reflection to examine how Critical AI Literacy can be fostered in meaningful and sustainable ways.

The project contributes to the theoretical foundation of AI literacy in TEFL and aims to prepare pre-service teachers to act as reflective and responsible agents in the use of AI.