The MTA-TPACK Dynamic Collaboration Spiral: Making Pedagogical Thinking Visible in Human–AI Scientific Visualization for Sustainable Teacher Innovation

Generative AI (GenAI) challenges traditional technology integration frameworks by introducing agentic systems that actively participate in meaning-making, requiring educators to shift from tool operation to cognitive orchestration. This study introduces the MTA–TPACK Dynamic Collaboration Spiral, a theoretical framework that integrates Meta-Task Awareness (MTA) to explain how static knowledge resources are dynamically activated during human–AI collaboration. We empirically illustrate this framework through a two-phase scientific visualization task concerning typhoon–terrain interactions, utilizing Midjourney for human-led orchestration and GPT-4o for closed-loop refinement. The results demonstrate that successful integration requires translating abstract disciplinary knowledge into precise, AI-intelligible visual constraints rather than relying solely on technical prompting skills. Furthermore, we document how evaluation practices evolve from simple error correction to structured, AI-assisted diagnosis. The resulting visual artifacts embody Visible Pedagogical Thinking (VPT)—externalized cognitive constructs that make expert reasoning inspectable and reusable. By foregrounding evaluation-centered task design, this study provides a transferable, theoretically grounded account of how human–AI collaboration can remain pedagogically meaningful. The model contributes to sustainable pedagogical innovation by offering a roadmap for strengthening teachers’ long-term epistemic agency in AI-mediated design environments.