Personae, Agency, and Visibility: Understanding Teacher Engagement with GenAI in Higher Education
Dissertation Proposal Title: Personae, Agency, and Visibility: Understanding Teacher Engagement with GenAI in Higher Education
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Jill Castek (Chair), Dr. Wenhao Diao, Dr. Yousra Abourehab
Location: If you're interested in attending this dissertation proposal presentation, please contact zuneramalik@arizona.edu to get the location information.
Dissertation Abstract: The emergence and widespread use of Generative AI (GenAI) has precipitated a tectonic shift in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT), challenging the established boundaries of authorship, professional identity, instructional expertise, and pedagogical authority. This dissertation proposal explores the multifaceted response of English language teachers in Pakistan higher education institutions to this fourth wave of technological innovation. This study examines how English language teachers in Pakistani higher education navigate GenAI through the lens of agency theory and persona theory. Drawing on Ahearn’s (2001) conceptualization of agency as a socioculturally mediated capacity to act and Biesta, Priestley, and Robinson’s (2015) ecological model of agency (comprising iterational, practical‑evaluative, and projective dimensions) the study investigates how teachers’ past experiences, present constraints, and future orientations shape their engagement with GenAI. To operationalize these dynamics, the project integrates Marshall’s (2014) persona theory, conceptualizing teachers’ public and professional self‑presentations as ‘thick personae’ that mediate their actions, decisions, and identity performances in GenAI‑mediated contexts.
Using survey design methodology (Weisberg, 2005) with both Likert scale and scenario-based items, the study examines Pakistani English teachers' orientations toward GenAI across five dimensions: attitudes and beliefs, knowledge and experimentation, practice and implementation, public visibility, and agency. These data will be triangulated with discourse‑analytic coding of teacher narratives to construct empirically grounded persona profiles representing distinct configurations of agency and professional identity. The study aims to produce a theoretically robust and contextually sensitive model explaining how teachers negotiate GenAI within the sociotechnical, cultural, and institutional conditions of Pakistani higher education.
The findings are expected to contribute to (a) agency theory by demonstrating how sociocultural mediation and ecological conditions shape teachers’ responses to technological disruption; (b) persona theory by extending thick‑persona analysis into the domain of AI‑mediated professional identity; and (c) GenAI‑in‑education research by offering empirically grounded insights for policy, professional development, and ethical integration frameworks.
