Interviews with 10 virtual elementary teachers show generative AI brings efficiency and instructional gains, but requires weighing misinformation, privacy, and ethics
This qualitative phenomenological study interviewed 10 virtual elementary teachers of kindergarten through fifth grade at a large elementary virtual school and used Creswell and Poth's (2018) data analysis spiral to derive four themes—efficiency, preservation of the teacher role, instructional enhancement, and AI literacy—showing that teachers simultaneously weigh efficiency and enhanced instructional quality against misinformation, privacy protection, ethical concerns, and misuse, and view generative AI as a dynamic tool whose value depends on thoughtful, informed, and human-centered application.