Mr Osama Koraishi
PhD Student

Summary

My doctoral research explores AI literacy among English language teachers in Syrian higher education, a context shaped by war, economic collapse, and years of exclusion from international research and training networks. Having taught English myself for over a decade, including years spent working and training Syrian teachers, I have seen first-hand how these conditions leave educators locked out of tools that could genuinely lighten their workload and improve their teaching. My research builds on the EFL AI-PACK framework, which I co-developed before starting my PhD, and uses a three-phase mixed-methods design to measure Syrian EFL teachers' current AI literacy, understand the barriers they face, and design and test a professional development programme to help close that gap to mitigate the AI divide these circumstances create. I hope that this work contributes to rebuilding a higher education system that has been through so much. Perhaps, the output of this research could also be applied to other disadvantaged contexts in the future as well.