Teachers and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI): mediation, challenges, and opportunities for student engagement

Abstract

This article investigates how elementary school teachers in Manaus have incorporated GenAI into their classrooms and to what extent this integration reconfigures teaching dynamics and impacts student engagement. Although lesson planning forms the backdrop of the study, the analytical focus is on teaching practices mediated by GenAI, covering processes of creation, adaptation, and implementation of explanations, exercises, activities, and other pedagogical support strategies. The qualitative and exploratory research involved 40 teachers from four public schools and used multiple data collection techniques, including questionnaires, structured experience reports, and classroom observation protocols. The results indicate that GenAI saves time in lesson preparation, expands the available methodological repertoire, and contributes to more responsive and inclusive practices, especially in serving students with learning difficulties. However, they also highlight the need for rigorous teacher curation to mitigate risks of conceptual inaccuracy, superficial explanations, and decontextualization. It was observed that the pedagogical use of GenAI enhances student engagement in cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions when articulated with critical and intentional mediation. The findings reinforce the importance of continuing education policies, actions aimed at digital equity, and ethical principles for the use of technology, ensuring that GenAI functions as an instrument of didactic innovation without compromising the centrality of human mediation in the educational process.