Validating an Instrument for Teachers' Acceptance of Artificial Intelligence in Education

TL;DR

This paper tackles the lack of high-quality instruments for measuring teachers' acceptance of AI in education. It develops a TAM-based five-dimension instrument (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention, self-efficacy, and anxiety) augmented with stimuli to address knowledge gaps, and validates it through expert reviews, think-aloud refinement, a field test, and robust CFA analyses. The final 27-item instrument demonstrates strong reliability and multiple forms of validity, making it a solid tool for investigating AI adoption in teaching and for informing professional development. The work advances the field by providing a rigorous, context-aware measure with clear applicability for pre-service teachers and future cross-cultural studies.

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) receives wider attention in education, examining teachers' acceptance of AI (TAAI) becomes essential. However, existing instruments measuring TAAI reported limited reliability and validity evidence and faced some design challenges, such as missing informed definitions of AI to participants. This study aimed to develop and validate a TAAI instrument, with providing sufficient evidence for high psychometric quality. Based on the literature, we first identified five dimensions of TAAI, including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention, self-efficacy, and anxiety, and then developed items to assess each dimension. We examined the face and content validity using expert review and think-aloud with pre-service teachers. Using the revised instrument, we collected responses from 274 pre-service teachers and examined the item discriminations to identify outlier items. We employed the confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha to examine the construct validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. Results confirmed the dimensionality of the scale, resulting in 27 items distributed in five dimensions. The study exhibits robust validity and reliability evidence for TAAI, thus affirming its usefulness as a valid measurement instrument.