When the Novelty Wears Off: AI, Teacher Agency, and My First Seminar

If almost every AI classroom study succeeds on paper, what is the next big question for educators?

Introduce an AI platform or VR headset to students, and motivation naturally spikes. Yet when the screen turns off, no algorithm can step up to the podium and TEACH!

Beyond the Novelty Effect

I recently attended my first online academic seminar, The NSTC Information Education Research Project Annual Conference, as a rookie PhD student. I genuinely admire the presenters for securing grants and designing tools for AR oral guidance, parent-communication simulations, and reading platforms.

However, twenty-plus years at KMJH has given me a reflexive curiosity about what happens after a study ends. In EdTech research, introducing a fresh tool to our own students almost guarantees positive data. I could easily run similar trials at KMJH, PU, or in my teacher workshops. Proving that technology boosts short-term learning is the easy part. The deeper question is: when AI is everywhere, how do teachers maintain our agency?

Backstage AI vs. Front-Stage Humanity

During the poster session, I had a great one-on-one chat with a warm professor interested in teacher psychology. At PU, I share AI master prompts to help students prepare for English-only job interviews. AI is brilliant for lesson prep, yet no machine can step inside the classroom or answer interview questions for them. Our shared passion for teacher agency clicked so well that she invited me to speak at her university—a joyful bonus to my first academic event!

The Golden Triangle: A Transcultural Blueprint

This semester, my Film Studies class has been super fun. Unpacking culture and history through theoretical frameworks isn't strictly "scientific," yet opinions without evidence don't convince me either. I really admire how criminology professor Puma Shen bridges this gap, turning rigorous disinformation research into clear, actionable public insights.

For my dissertation, I want to build a "Golden Triangle" that examines how Taiwanese secondary teachers prepare students for international exchanges. Having trained KMJH campus tour guides and hosted sister-school visits from Korea, I know how much heart goes into authentic cultural sharing. Here is how the three corners come together:

1. The Subjective (Critical Humanities). Driven by meaning and identity, this lens examines how AI often defaults to generic, Westernized "tourist brochure" versions of Taiwan when drafting welcome speeches or cultural lessons. Using transcultural theory, we can critique how AI homogenizes our local lived experiences.
2. The Objective (Empirical Social Science). Driven by observable data, we can track a cohort of teachers through screen-recordings, prompt logs, and stimulated-recall interviews as they negotiate with the AI. Where do they accept the machine's phrasing, and where does their teacher agency kick in to inject authentic Local Brew, Local Voices?
3. The Transformative (Praxis and Action). Moving from studying the world to changing it, the ultimate goal is building a practical "Transcultural AI Prompting Protocol" that empowers international education programs across Taiwan.

By uniting subjective meaning, objective evidence, and transformative action, we keep human educators right where we belong—in the driver's seat. HERE WE GO!