Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots

Nayoung Ku

doi:10.29333/ejmste/18067

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Nayoung Ku ¹ ^*

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¹ Gyeonggi Science High School, Suwon, SOUTH KOREA^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Based on an instrumental approach, this study explores how elementary pre-service teachers engage in instrumental genesis as they design artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as teaching instruments for the “number and operations” domain. Eleven pre-service teachers participated in a prompt engineering lecture and developed chatbots. The findings revealed that the teachers assigned diverse instrumental functions to the AI chatbots, including supporting problem-solving, facilitating conceptual understanding, guiding problem-posing, and providing real-life application examples while actively incorporating scaffolding, bounded autonomy aligned with the curriculum, affective support, and gamification into their designs. Participants faced persistent issues in reconciling their instrumental intentions with the unpredictability and limitations of generative AI, particularly prompt interpretation and curriculum fidelity. These findings highlight the need for pre-service teacher education programs to offer reflective experiences with AI integration and foster adaptive design competencies, emphasizing the shift from technology adoption to empowering teachers as critical designers and mediators of AI instruments.

Keywords

artificial intelligence chatbot
instrumental genesis
instrumentalization
instrumentation
elementary pre-service teacher

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, Volume 22, Issue 3, March 2026, Article No: em2792

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

Publication date: 11 Mar 2026

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Article Downloads: 11

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How to cite this article

APA

Ku, N. (2026). Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 22(3), em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

Vancouver

Ku N. Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2026;22(3):em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

AMA

Ku N. Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2026;22(3), em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

Chicago

Ku, Nayoung. "Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 2026 22 no. 3 (2026): em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

Harvard

Ku, N. (2026). Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 22(3), em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067

MLA

Ku, Nayoung "Exploring elementary pre-service teachers’ instrumental genesis in designing AI chatbots". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, vol. 22, no. 3, 2026, em2792. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/18067