<p>This study examines the integration of AI in education (AIEd) through the lens of critical AI literacy, addressing the challenges educators face and the influence of dominant discourses on their perceptions of agency and collective well-being. Conducted within a newly designed course titled “Artificial Intelligence in Education,” the research explores the concept of discursive closure, which limits educators’ critical engagement by promoting deterministic views of AI. The findings reveal that discursive closure often forces educators into adopting AI without sufficient critical examination, marginalizing their voices and reducing their agency. By introducing the Directions of Cartographies of Critical AI Literacy, this study provides a framework for navigating AI integration that supports educators in mapping their struggles, imagining alternatives, and engaging in resistance and action to cultivate critical AI consciousness. The framework highlights overlapping pathways through which educators can challenge dominant narratives, surface marginalized perspectives, and envision more just futures for AI in education. Our findings illustrate that educators’ engagements with AI often blur neat distinctions between struggle, possibility, resistance, and action, highlighting critical AI literacy as a dynamic practice of negotiating contradictions rather than a linear progression.</p>