Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly reshaping English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching. However, little is known about how experienced teachers make sense of professional AI literacy in the absence of institutional guidance. This study explored how Iranian EFL teachers experienced and interpreted their AI literacy across the five domains of the Professional-GenAI-Competence (P-GenAI-C) framework.
An interpretive phenomenological qualitative design was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 EFL teachers working in private language institutes in Tehran and Yasuj. The P-GenAI-C domains served as sensitizing concepts in a hybrid, framework-guided analysis that retained openness to emergent meanings across participants' accounts. Interview transcripts were read repeatedly to identify significant statements and meaning units within each participant's account. These meanings were then compared across cases and synthesized into domain-specific and emergent cross-domain themes.
Teachers experienced GenAI through pedagogical ambivalence: it offered practical efficiency and creative support while generating uncertainty about accuracy, authenticity, ethics and professional responsibility. AI literacy therefore emerged as situated moral and pedagogical judgment rather than technical proficiency alone, with teachers acting as curriculum negotiators between technological affordances, local cultural expectations and human values. Preparation of Students remained a pronounced gap even among experienced teachers.
The study extends the P-GenAI-C framework beyond initial teacher education to experienced EFL teachers in an under-researched context. It shows how limited institutional policy and uneven infrastructure intensify teacher agency and support career-spanning professional development, explicit ethical guidance, peer learning communities and locally responsive AI-literacy curricula.
