TITLE:
Artificial Intelligence and the Teacher Image? “That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Teacher”
AUTHORS:
Joanna Black, Juan Carlos Castro, Stacey Cann
KEYWORDS:
Artificial Intelligence, Art Education, Arts Education, Educational Research, Teacher Representation, Educational Media, Teacher Portrayals, Teacher Images, Media Literacy, Critical Literacy, Teacher Stereotypes, Educational Media, Information Literacy
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.7,
July
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: In 1995, Weber and Mitchell wrote their influential book, That’s Funny You Don’t Look Like a Teacher, in which they examined the socially constructed representations and identity issues of teachers. The authors of this article draw on Weber and Mitchell’s ideas, comparing their findings with imagery produced by generative artificial intelligence of art teachers. Using a compositional interpretation approach, we examined 300 images of art educators across elementary and university fine art contexts, produced by three GAI platforms: DALL-E, Meta AI, and Stable Diffusion. We specifically examined gender, age, and race/representation to determine whether depictions of art educators have changed or remained unchanged from Webber and Mitchell’s descriptions of teachers. We found that within GAI representations, current negative images of teachers so common today in films and television shows were absent. Consistent with Weber and Mitchell’s findings, the good teacher prevailed: we attribute this to the positive representations in stock imagery and social media portrayals that GAI’s are trained on and reliant upon. We also found that the three GAI platforms produced different teacher representations: DALL-E lacked male representational diversity; Meta AI produced broader racial depictions; and Stable Diffusion had difficulty depicting teachers’ ages. We also found that “whiteness” prevailed in the GAI depictions. Findings indicate that people should be cognizant of the limitations of the technological AI platforms they use. Because AI imagery is influential and impactful, and because artificial intelligence platforms are rapidly becoming increasingly sophisticated, we highly recommend the continued study of cultural imagery and assumptions that promote stereotypes, not only in teaching but in all professions.