Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Online Journal of Education and Teaching, cilt.13, sa.1, ss.165-176, 2026 (Scopus)
This qualitative study investigates how public high school in-service English language teachers perceive the role, challenges and the usefulness of AI tools when integrating image generation AI tools into their lesson material development practices. The research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with four female ELT teachers at a public high school in Türkiye using a seven-question protocol. The research data underwent Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) which used inductive data-driven coding methods to analyze the information. Iterative coding and constant comparison were also performed using theory-based techniques for improvement. The research findings indicated that teachers employed image generation to develop customized educational content, which they used to create visual learning materials and multi-media educational activities for their students. The participants also stressed that teachers need to keep their teaching authority because it helps students maintain their creative abilities and AI systems must operate based on teacher instructions. In addition, the participating teachers described their standard “trust work” which includes three tasks to verify content diversity, age appropriateness and to detect between real and fake images. They also pointed to workload issues, time-to-learn problems and their restricted ability to write AI prompts, their limited resource access and their uncertainty about institutional professional development programs’ efficiency. Therefore, they stress their needs for in-service training that focuses on practical applications and complete ethical and policy guidelines to help them use classroom technology properly.