Framework: Dialoguing with the Algorithm

Dialoguing with the Algorithm: An Autoethnographic Study of Midlife Voice, Uncertainty, and Teacher Identity in a ChatGPT Exchange

Abstract

This autoethnography explores how an aging foreign educator negotiates identity through AI-mediated dialogue in Korean EFL. Analysis of a ChatGPT exchange reveals moments of prompting, resistance, and revoicing, highlighting AI as a discursive partner. Findings emphasize epistemic labor, conscious cultural mediation, and the need for reflexive digital literacy to sustain pedagogical authority in human-AI collaboration.

Keywords: Autoethnography; Teacher Identity; Artificial Intelligence; Aging Educators; Dialogic Pedagogy; Cultural Mediation; Digital Labor

By: Maria Lisak EdD (How to cite)

Framework

As an aging, foreign educator engaging with generative AI, I approach this study with a conceptual framework that brings together theories of identity, labor, and relational becoming. This framework supports my inquiry into what it means to teach—and to age—in a profession increasingly shaped by algorithmic logics, data-driven design, and techno-optimistic expectations. I draw from three key strands: (1) scholarship on aging and teacher identity, which illuminates how midlife educators negotiate shifting roles and self-concepts; (2) dialogic and relational theories of voice, which help me understand the AI exchange not as instrumental but as co-constructive; and (3) critical perspectives on digital labor, which situate AI tools within broader contexts of precarity, speed, and institutional neglect. Together, these lenses guide how I interpret the affective, epistemic, and ethical tensions that surfaced in my engagement with ChatGPT.

Conceptual–Theoretical Framework: Aging and Identity Work in Transnational English Teaching

Analytical Framework: Voice, Reflexivity, and Dialogic Becoming

Contextual Interpretive Framework: AI-Mediated Labor and Liminal Pedagogy

Framework Synthesis: AI Encounters as Sites of Embodied Identity Work

These three dimensions—aging identity, dialogic voice, and precarious labor—converge to frame my AI encounter as a site of embodied, relational, and politically situated identity work. As an aging educator, I bring both accumulated pedagogical wisdom and heightened vulnerability to technological change. In this encounter, theories of dialogism, performativity, and intra-activity reveal identity not as fixed but as continually negotiated through engagement with algorithmic otherness.

My position as a foreign educator in the Korean EFL context intensifies these dynamics: cultural marginality adds interpretive layers, and institutional precarity heightens the stakes of adaptation. The AI exchange becomes a liminal space—where categories such as human/machine, teacher/learner, and expert/novice blur—yet this liminality is shaped by the material conditions and power relations in which it unfolds.

This framework positions my ChatGPT dialogue as more than individual reflection or pedagogical problem-solving. It is a lens on broader tensions in contemporary education: how to sustain the relational and ethical dimensions of teaching in digitized institutions; how to honor the wisdom of experience while engaging technological possibility; and how to approach AI as a collaborator without losing sight of the labor conditions and power relations that define such collaborations. The five analytical moments that follow illuminate these tensions through one educator’s encounter with algorithmic assistance, tracing how professional identity emerges through the patient work of positioning, responding, and becoming—even in the age of artificial intelligence.

For this paper, click here. 

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