Key teacher skills and knowledge for GenAI implementation? Currently reading Belkina et al. (2025)

Belkina et al. (2025) did a systematic review of case studies of implementations of GenAI in higher education and, based on that, found key teacher skills and knowledge necessary for GenAI implementation: Basically, being able to use GenAI for adaptive & personalised feedback and personalised learning; being able to use it in diverse teaching strategies; and effectively combining teacher’s content, GenAI tools, and teaching strategies. Not so much magic here…

They use a framework that shows (–see featured image, and I had to of course redo it myself to make sense of it–) how those skills exist where pedagogical knowledge (i.e. how to teach), content knowledge (what to teach), and GenAI technological knowledge (how to do stuff with GenAI) overlap, and are embedded in GenAI contextual knowledge (i.e. legal situation, policies, curricula, ethics). And that’s basically it. Belkina et al. (2025) write that “[t]he developed GenAI-TPACK framework offers a structured approach for educators to integrate generative AI tools into their teaching practices effectively and ethically“, which I think might be a sliiiight overstatement, but then they elaborate that, by dividing the required knowledge into domains, it makes it easier to scaffold learning: “Educators start by developing foundational technological skills, such as understanding how to interact with GenAI tools and creating content like text or images. These basic capabilities allow educators to explore GenAI’s potential in routine tasks, such as automating feedback or generating lesson materials, while building their confidence. As educators progress, they can leverage TPK to incorporate GenAI into teaching strategies, such as creating interactive activities or providing personalized learning experiences, which transform traditional approaches and enhance student engagement” and so on and so forth, until ultimately, all domains are integrated with each other and in the teacher’s context.

So what could we do with this framework? I think it’s actually useful in academic development to structure work on GenAI, to be able to point out where the focus of different activities is. Is it about general familiarity with GenAI as a prerequisite for using it in teaching, or on how, in GenAI PK, GenAI interacts with pedagogical practices, how to navigate constraints, or how to create more interactive and engaging learning activities and enhance teaching strategies? Or, on the other hand, in GenAI CK, is it about better understanding the discipline or generating disciplinary materials? Or are we really in the overlap where we use those key skills, and are also considering the context?

I think it could also be useful when talking with students about GenAI, here then using knowing how to learn instead of Pedagogical Knowledge, to see how all those three domains and the context — knowing how to learn, having some understanding of the discipline, knowing how to use GenAI, and knowing what is allowed and ethical — need to be in place before anything good can happen with GenAI.

Belkina, M., Daniel, S., Nikolic, S., Haque, R., Lyden, S., Neal, P., … & Hassan, G. M. (2025). Implementing generative AI (GenAI) in higher education: a systematic review of case studies. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 100407.