Adaptive Strategies of Veteran Junior High School Teachers Facing AI Integration in English Teaching

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has reshaped the demands teachers face in the classroom, yet how veteran teachers with substantial accumulated pedagogical experience respond to this disruption remains empirically underexplored. This qualitative case study explores how veteran junior high school teachers perceive, cope with, and pedagogically adapt to AI integration in their English classrooms. Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews with four junior high school English teachers in East Java, Indonesia, with approximately 15 to 28 years of teaching experience, analyzed using Braun and Clarke's six-phase thematic analysis. Findings reveal five interconnected patterns: teachers perceive AI simultaneously as opportunity and challenge, ranging from acute identity crisis to steady caution; coping is achieved through trial-and-error self-teaching and reciprocal exchange with younger colleagues; the most developed adaptive response repositions AI strictly as a preparatory tool while relocating assessment to AI-resistant oral performance; teachers manage AI-savvy students through structural redesign and direct supervision; and across all participants, professional identity is reconstructed around a relational, character-forming core viewed as beyond machine reach. The study argues that veteran teachers are active agents who mobilize accumulated pedagogical expertise to reshape, rather than simply absorb, the demands AI places on their practice.