English teaching machines: AI and learning to teach subject English
Submitted by:
Scott Bulfin
Abstract:
Learning to be a secondary school English teacher is complex and challenging. Preservice teachers must grapple with new knowledge and ideas, develop professional practices and identities and become attuned to the worlds of schools and young people. Learning to be a secondary school English teacher is also a technologically mediated experience. As the main contexts for the learning of preservice teachers, universities and schools are awash with digital data generated via the activities of teachers and students, while highly structured software platforms shape the teaching and learning experience. Recently, the embrace of generative AI (‘Gen AI’) has put increasing pressure on existing forms of learning, collaboration and assessment (Perrotta 2024; Warner, 2025). The wide scale adoption of large language models (LLMs) and their apparent capacity to summarise and generate ‘human-like’ text has been the most recent and visible ‘disruption’ to the teaching of reading and writing in universities and schools and to teacher activities such as planning for learning (Robinson, 2024; Selwyn, 2024). Learning to teach secondary English means coming to grips with the demands of this complex digital field; a field which is shaping possibilities for learning, emerging professional identities and preservice teacher’s understanding of their subject/discipline at least partially through algorithmic and machine processes. These conditions have significant implications for how early career L1 English teachers understand their work, conditions which are not fully understood or likely to be realised for some time. This paper reports on a project investigating how these technological conditions are shaping the formative experiences of preservice English teachers currently undertaking initial teacher education studies in Melbourne, Victoria in the largest Faculty of Education in Australia. Data from interviews with preservice teachers is discussed, along with an invitation to collaborate with the research team.
References
Perrotta, C. (2024). Plug-and-play education: Knowledge and learning in the age of platforms and artificial intelligence. Routledge.
Robinson, B. (2023). Speculative propositions for digital writing under the new autonomous model of literacy. Postdigital Science and Education, 5:117–135. doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00358-5
Selwyn, N. (2024). On the limits of artificial intelligence (AI) in education. Nordisk tidsskrift for pedagogikk og kritikk, 10, 3-14. http://doi.org/10.23865/ntpk.v10.6062
Warner, J. (2025). More than words: How to think about writing in the age of AI. Basic Books.