Fostering Pre-Service Teachers’ Professional Problem Solving and Higher-Order Thinking Skills With a GenAI-Powered Interactive Fiction-Based Adaptive Teaching Simulation

Generative artificial intelligence offers substantial potential for teacher education programs; however, its passive or uncritical use may undermine higher-order thinking skills. Despite growing interest, empirical evidence on how GenAI can be pedagogically designed to actively foster professional cognition in pre-service teachers remains limited. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates the effects of a GenAI-powered Interactive Fiction–based Adaptive Teaching Simulation on pre-service teachers’ professional problem-solving skills and higher-order thinking skills. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, the present study involved 114 pre-service teachers, comprising a treatment group that engaged with the simulation and a control group that received non-simulation-based instruction. After controlling for pre-test scores, the treatment group obtained significantly higher post-test scores than the control group on the thinking and evaluator subdimensions of professional problem solving. Additionally, the treatment group showed higher adjusted post-test critical thinking scores than the control group, with a medium effect size. The qualitative findings supported these results, revealing that the system fostered reflective decision-making, multi-perspective reasoning, professional preparedness, and more informed and cautious perceptions regarding the use of GenAI in educational contexts. Overall, this study provides practical and theoretical implications for the pedagogically grounded integration of GenAI-powered Interactive Fiction simulations into teacher education programs.