Cultivating pre-service teachers’ design thinking and generative artificial intelligence literacy through an LLM-based educational website design task

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), particularly large language models (LLMs), presents both opportunities and challenges for education, necessitating the development of GenAI literacy among pre-service teachers. This study examined the effects of using GenAI as a collaborator within a novel LLM-based educational website design task on pre-service teachers’ task performance, design thinking, and GenAI literacy. In a quasi-experimental design, 52 pre-service teachers were compared based on their self-reported approach: seven experimental groups (n = 28) utilized GenAI for the design task, while six control groups (n = 24) completed the task without GenAI support. Qualitative responses detailed the various ways GenAI was used throughout the design process and highlighted perceived advantages and disadvantages. Quantitative analyses indicated that the experimental groups achieved significantly higher scores in task performance, overall perceived design thinking competence, particularly in the define and ideate phases, and perceived GenAI literacy compared to the control groups. These findings offered implications for using authentic, complex collaborative design tasks as a pedagogical strategy to cultivate the critical and practical competencies pre-service teachers needed to effectively and responsibly integrate GenAI into their future educational practice.