Reconceptualizing Prompt Engineering as Reflective Professional Practice: A Framework for Teacher Development

The rapid integration of generative AI in education often frames teachers as technology users who primarily need technical training. Existing prompt engineering frameworks offer technical guidance but have limited grounding in theories of teacher professional development or reflective practice. This misses a key feature of prompt engineering: prompting can externalize pedagogical thinking, making AI interaction a process of knowledge externalization. Through systematic conceptual analysis, this paper proposes a reconceptualization of prompt engineering from a technical competency to a reflective professional practice. The methodology integrates three theoretical traditions: Schön’s reflective practice theory (for externalizing tacit knowledge), Wiggins and McTighe’s backward design (for structuring instructional decisions), and Celik’s AI-TPACK framework (as integrated knowledge base). This synthesis suggests that effective prompting can be understood as an act of pedagogical externalization requiring integrated professional knowledge. The paper develops a seven-strategy framework (RPE framework) as an analytic lens for examining prompt engineering sophistication. This theoretical framework offers theory-derived hypotheses that require future empirical validation rather than presenting verified outcomes. Ultimately, the RPE framework offers a conceptual basis for potentially shifting the focus from technical training to teacher professional development by repositioning educators as AI-assisted instructional designers rather than mere AI users.