<![CDATA[The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has shifted education from content digitization toward intelligent learning processes. In mathematics education, however, AI integration remains pedagogically complex, particularly in relation to teachers’ professional roles, adaptive instruction, and teacher-reported support for students’ metacognitive regulation. This study explored how guided integration of generative AI influences instructional practices and professional role transformation among lower secondary mathematics teachers. A qualitative exploratory design was employed. Fourteen mathematics teachers participated in a structured 12-hour professional development workshop focused on pedagogically guided AI integration. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, workshop field observations, and teacher-designed instructional artifacts. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify patterns in teachers’ post-intervention experiences. Findings revealed four interconnected themes: (1) AI as an enabler of personalized and adaptive learning pathways; (2) conversational AI as a dialogic cognitive partner supporting structured mathematical reasoning; (3) AI-mediated feedback as a teacher-perceived catalyst for metacognitive monitoring and self-regulated learning; and (4) ethical, pedagogical, and infrastructural constraints shaping sustainable implementation. Teachers perceived AI not as a replacement for professional judgment but as a tool requiring deliberate pedagogical mediation within a human-in-the-loop framework. The study contributes a context-sensitive model of teacher-mediated AI integration in mathematics classrooms and highlights the necessity of structured professional development to ensure ethically grounded, cognitively meaningful, and pedagogically aligned use of generative AI in school mathematics]]>
