Becoming an inclusive teacher across ‘virtual and real’ contexts: negotiating teacher identity through engagement with GenAI

This study explores how pre-service teachers construct and negotiate their professional identities as inclusive educators through interactions with generative AI across virtual and real-world teaching contexts. Drawing on ANT as a sociomaterial enactment of post-structural thinking, the research analyzes GenAI-mediated classroom designs, reflective writing, lesson plans, and interviews to trace how pedagogical values are articulated and translated across contexts. Findings show that GenAI-enabled design tasks functioned as performative spaces where participants envisioned inclusive, equity-centred learning environments. Yet these virtual ideals often met friction in lesson planning and practicum contexts, shaped by institutional norms, material constraints, and mentor expectations. Rather than abandoning their commitments, participants recalibrated their visions, reflecting critically, adapting to constraints, and navigating moments of affirmation and resistance. GenAI emerged as a sociomaterial, reflective actor that provokes ethical and affective dimensions of teacher identity formation in teacher education.