Empower Educators with GenAI: International Collaborative Research (KR-ID)

Project Overview

This international collaborative research between Ewha Womans University (South Korea) and Universitas Sebelas Maret (Indonesia) addressed the growing need for teacher professional development (TPD) in the era of Generative AI (GenAI). As a lead research assistant, Chohui was responsible for end-to-end project management from proposal development to manuscript writing.

To support teachers in meaningfully integrating AI into educational practice, the research teams co-developed and implemented a specialized training program grounded in the principles of 'teacher as designer'. The program engaged 70 Indonesian in-service and pre-service teachers through a series of collaborative workshops.

*This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea.

**This work is currently accepted to Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR).

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Problem We Found

As generative AI (GenAI) rapidly transforms the educational landscape, teachers are increasingly expected to integrate intelligent tools into classrooms to foster students' creativity and problem-solving skills. However, many educators lack the pedagogical knowledge, technical confidence, and design experience required to meaningfully incorporate GenAI into teaching and learning.

Without targeted professional development, teachers risk remaining passive technology users rather than active designers of AI-enhanced learning environments, leaving the potential of GenAI for creative problem solving largely untapped.

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Our Approach

1. Literature review on GenAI, Creative Problem Solving & Teacher Professional Development

To identify teacher competencies needed in the GenAI era, we first reviewed literature on GenAI, Creative Problem Solving (CPS), and Teacher Professional Development (TPD). We developed the CPS with GenAI framework by theoretically extending Treffinger et al.'s (2000) CPS model, mapping how AI can support each stage of the CPS process.

2. Designing the TPD Program

Building on the CPS with GenAI framework and the principle of teachers as designers, we designed a professional development workshop that integrated theoretical understanding of CPS and GenAI with practical application.

3. From Theory to Practice: Experiencing CPS with GenAI

The workshop included hands-on sessions in which participants used GenAI tools to solve problems and apply them to instructional design. To enhance authenticity, we incorporated tasks from the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment, allowing teachers to experience real-world creative challenges and explore how GenAI can be meaningfully embedded in such contexts.