GenAI and Global South TESOL teacher educator pedagogical practices: an emotion and identity perspective

Research on how to integrate GenAI into teaching and learning practices has been much investigated; however, little is known about how GenAI technologies shape language teacher educators’ practices, emotions, and identities. Empirical research on the emotions and identities of language teacher educators (LTEs) in the Global South is even more underexplored. This case study investigates how GenAI technologies shaped the emotions and identities of two Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) language teacher educators in Indonesia. Our findings revealed that the pressure to keep pace with GenAI developments under the financial and epistemological constraints of the Global South exacerbated the emotion labour of our participants. However, they were able to successfully transform this emotion labour into an opportunity to reframe their professional identities as learner-collaborators. They also countered the Global North-centric AI learning platform design by integrating localised GenAI tools into their instruction. By sharing power with their student teachers through expressing their vulnerability, our participants gained emotional rewards from valuing their students’ expertise and building positive relationships. We close this paper by discussing the need to bridge the Global South-Global North gap in the spirit of achieving epistemic and educational justice.