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Bildung has historically been a central educational aim in the Nordic countries (Burman, 2014; Sjöström et al., 2017), grounding education in democratic participation, ethical awareness, and the development of autonomous, socially engaged citizens. In today’s post-digital societies, where digital technologies permeate economic, political, and social life, the boundaries between humans and technologies are increasingly blurred (Knox, 2019). We collaborate with digital systems as epistemic partners (Lund & Aagaard, 2020), a dynamic intensified by the rapid diffusion of generative AI (GenAI). These developments challenge democratic education systems to critically reconsider how knowledge is produced, mediated, and valued, and also what it means to be and develop as humans.

Bildung entails understanding oneself as a social and civic actor (Hegel & Elster, 1967), cultivating ethical responsibility, and contributing to democratic development (Kant & Zehbe, 1975). Yet recent decades have seen the diminishing status of Bildung in favour of qualifications, labor-market relevance, and measurable learning outcomes in Nordic curricula (Biesta, 2020; Erstad & Voogt, 2018). This shift risks narrowing education’s democratic and relational dimensions.

GenAI forces a renewed reckoning with these tensions. On the one hand, GenAI destabilizes outcome-focused pedagogies by producing traditional educational artefacts, such as essays, with minimal student engagement. This underscores the need to refocus on learning processes, critical inquiry, and collaborative meaning-making. In doing so, GenAI paradoxically re-opens space for Bildung-oriented educational goals.

On the other hand, GenAI also presents substantive risks to democratic Bildung. Its capacity to generate misinformation and authoritative-sounding but inaccurate content challenges students’ and citizens’ ability to navigate truth, trust, and public discourse. Established models of critical thinking, democratic deliberation, and epistemic agency therefore require re-examination in a technological landscape where information is abundant, ambiguous, and automated.

Teacher education becomes crucial in addressing these democratic and pedagogical challenges. Teacher educators must navigate GenAI’s opportunities and risks while supporting student teachers in cultivating both their own Bildung and Bildung in their future pupils. Teacher educators’ understandings of educational purposes, digital technologies, and democratic responsibility shape how GenAI is integrated, or resisted, within schooling.

This paper presents findings from a reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) of semi-structured in-depth interviews (Morris, 2015) with 20 teacher educators across five Norwegian teacher education institutions. We ask: How can teacher educators promote Bildung in a world of generative AI?

We explore how these educators understand Bildung today and how they perceive and address the challenges following the rise of GenAI through a discursive approach (Edley, 2001). Our aim is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how to rethink education and democratic responsibility in an AI-driven society.