An Empirical Study on the Current Status of Generative AI-Empowered Instructional Design among Pre-service English Teachers

Abstract

The iterative evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has opened up new avenues forenhancing pre-service English teachers’ instructional design competence. To examine the current status of GenAI-empowered instructional design applications, this paper surveyed 180 English pre-service teachers at Yulin University across four dimensions: cognitive attitude, application behaviors, TPACK fusion capability, realistic challenges and development needs. The findings reveal that pre-service English teachers generally recognize the value of GenAI-empowered instructional design and apply it to fundamental areas including instructional objective design, instructional content structure and instructional resource development, yet they remain less competent in higher-order tasks such as learner analyses, differentiated instructional design, and instructional evaluation. This paper proposes several pathways, including strengthening technology-tiered training, refining instructional design evaluation criteria, and cultivating the concept of human-AI collaboration, thereby promoting pre-service English teachers’ instructional design competence, as well as human-AI collaboration.