ORBIS SCHOLAE

In history education, the integration of large language models has given rise to an innovative practice employing avatars based on artificial intelligence (AI) that enable dialogic interaction with simulated historical figures. This study examines this practice from the perspective of teachers’ professional reflection, focusing on an informal online professional community of history teachers during the 2024/2025 school year, where participants collectively explored meaningful ways of integrating these tools into classroom practice. The aim of the study is to analyse how teachers frame classroom work with historical avatars, negotiate their epistemic status, and interpret their educational potential in relation to the development of historical thinking. The research adopts a qualitative design, combining the description of naturally occurring data from the online community with thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with lower and upper secondary history teachers. Participating teachers conceptualize AI-generated historical figures as a hybrid didactic object whose pedagogical value depends on explicit framing and the maintenance of epistemic distance. The potential of this tool lies in its dialogic nature and in its capacity to foreground the nature of historical knowledge, particularly by fostering students’ ability to distinguish between interpretation, simulation, and historical evidence.

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