Abstract
This chapter aims to foreground the value-based and moral dimensions of the teaching profession at a time when teaching is increasingly framed as a function that can be replaced by digital platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). This chapter challenges that reductionist view by arguing that teachers play a fundamentally irreplaceable role as carriers and mediators of values. The study involves 22 practising teachers working in public secondary schools in Türkiye. It adopts a qualitative, narrative-based research design with a qualitative narrative inquiry based on written narrative elicitation. The primary aim is to explore how teachers construct their professional identities and articulate values education within contemporary debates on technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on teachers' own narratives, the chapter seeks to demonstrate that teaching is not merely a cognitive activity but a deeply human, relational, and ethical practice through which core values such as responsibility, justice, respect, patience, and empathy are enacted and transmitted.