Roseanne Kheir Farraj, Aya Onallah, Nizar Bitar E23 professional authority. This study investigates how tertiary-level English language teachers in Israel perceive their professional roles and navigate their identity during this critical technological transition. The Israeli higher education context presents a particularly high-stakes environment for this inquiry. English proficiency is not merely an academic skill but a crucial gateway to international scholarship and professional mobility, positioning English Language Units (ELUs) as vital institutional bridges. The encroachment of AI, through both student use and institutional policy, destabilizes the professional roles of these teachers at a moment when their contribution is most vital. Understanding their perceptions during the pre-implementation phase-a period fraught with anticipation, concern, and hope-is therefore essential for designing professional development that can prepare both educators and their students for an AI-augmented future. This study, therefore, explores teachers' identity work as they stand at the precipice of a technology-induced professional shift, seeking to understand how they make sense of their roles in a rapidly changing educational landscape. Theoretical Positioning This study employs a dual theoretical lens to analyze teachers’ identity work in the face of technological disruption. First, we draw on boundary space theory, which conceptualizes professional identity as a dynamic process negotiated during transitional periods (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011). Originally describing the shift from student to novice teacher, we extend this concept to the technology-induced transition of AI integration. This creates a new boundary space where educators must renegotiate their roles, expertise, and professional values, balancing institutional expectations with their own agency. Treating AI integration as a boundary space reframes it from a mere technical shift to a consequential identity experience. Second, to address the specific competencies required to navigate this transition, we utilize the Intelligent-TPACK (i-TPACK) framework (Celik, 2023). Extending Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) original model, i-TPACK delineates the unique technological, pedagogical, content, and ethical knowledge teachers need to integrate AI responsibly. For language educators, this framework highlights the necessity of combining deep pedagogical knowledge with a critical understanding of AI's affordances and ethical risks, such as fairness and transparency. Together, boundary space theory illuminates the identity negotiation process, while i-TPACK specifies the knowledge domains required to enact it, providing a comprehensive framework for our investigation. The Present Study While research on AI in language education is growing, critical gaps remain. Scholarship has yet to fully examine how disruptive technologies mediate teacher identity, with most studies focusing on career-stage rather than technology-induced transitions (Rushton et al., 2023). Furthermore, while the potential of AI tools to support personalized learning is recognized (Jiang et al., 2022), the specific context of Israeli higher education-where English proficiency is a high-stakes requirement-remains underexplored. This study addresses these gaps by examining how English language teachers in Israeli higher education perceive their professional roles during the pre-implementation phase of AI integration. Guided by the dual frameworks of boundary space theory and i-TPACK, the study seeks to answer the following central question: How do English language teachers at the tertiary level in Israel perceive their professional role in light of the potential integration of AI in language teaching? Sub-
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