Exploring Mathematics Teacher Educators' Lesson Study Experiences in Supporting Pre‐Service Teachers' Dialogic Engagement With AI

ABSTRACT Background Lesson study is an educator‐led professional development approach that originated in Japan, in which a group of educators collaboratively plan, teach, observe, reflect, and revise lessons to improve teaching and learning. In this study, five teacher educators collaborated in the context of lesson study to explore the pedagogical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their blended courses. Objectives Two research questions were investigated: (1) What changes do teacher educators report in their knowledge, beliefs, and practices related to the pedagogical use of AI as a result of collaboration in lesson study? What challenges do they encounter in this process? (2) What perceptions do PSTs have regarding the use of AI and prompt engineering, and what evidence is there of the development of their prompt engineering skills during mathematics learning activities designed through lesson study? Methods Participants included five teacher educators and 36 pre‐service teachers in two different pre‐service teacher education courses. Data collection included field notes from lesson observations and written reflections by the teacher educators, as well as pre‐service teachers' work, interviews, and reflections from AI‐supported in‐class tasks. Ethical approval for this study was granted by the institutional review board, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. A thematic analysis approach with a collaborative coding focus to support validity was utilised. Results and Conclusions Identified themes for teacher educators included the development of pedagogical approaches for integrating AI, strengthened commitments to ethical and critical AI use, and increased confidence in designing AI‐supported learning experiences. Themes for pre‐service teachers included increased knowledge and skill in prompt engineering and the development of more reflective and dialogic engagement with AI. The findings highlight the potential of lesson study to support teacher educators in combining prompt engineering with mathematical task analysis to design learning experiences in which pre‐service teachers critically evaluate and refine AI‐generated mathematical tasks intended to promote conceptual understanding.