Abstract:

Ethical discussions of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in language education are frequently dominated by concerns about cheating and academic misconduct. While important, this narrow framing risks obscuring more impactful ethical issues shaping GenAI use in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). This paper draws on survey and interview data from TESOL educators to examine how teachers conceptualise ethics in relation to GenAI. Findings show that, beyond academic integrity, teachers express significant concerns regarding data privacy, surveillance, algorithmic bias, unequal access to AI technologies, and shifting distributions of agency between teachers, learners, and automated systems. These concerns are analysed through critical digital pedagogy, responsible AI frameworks, and posthuman theory, highlighting how GenAI reconfigures power relations and professional roles in language education. The analysis is situated within international policy discourses, including guidance from the European Commission and UNESCO, and reveals persistent gaps between policy principles and classroom realities. The paper argues for moving beyond misconduct-centred narratives towards ethically informed teacher mediation and critical digital literacy.

Keywords:

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), ethics in language education, TESOL, critical digital literacy, teacher agency.