A Study On The Acceptance And Use Of AIEd Technologies And Its Influencing Factors For K-12 EFL Teachers

Artificial Intelligence(AI)has exerted enormous influence on humans and nature.Education is inevitably affected by it as well.The trend of AI combined with education has given birth to many AI English products,both for teaching and learning purposes.Teachers have also risen to the changes and challenges brought by AI education.However,limited researchers paid attention to K-12 EFL(English as a foreign language)teachers’ perceptions of using AI in their teaching in China.Therefore,it is necessary to explore K-12 EFL teachers’ acceptance of AIEd(Artificial Intelligence in Education)technologies in order to provide corresponding solutions for teacher training and help them be adaptive in the new AI era.This study aimed to conduct empirical research to explore K-12 EFL teachers’acceptance level and attitudes towards AI education products,and the influencing factors that affect their acceptance.Considering the purposes of this study,two research questions were proposed to guide the conduct of this study:(1)To what extent do K-12 EFL teachers accept and use AIEd technologies in their teaching?(2)What are the influencing factors that affect K-12 EFL teachers’ acceptance and use of AIEd technologies?After reviewing previous and related studies,the UTAUT(Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology)model was applied as the conceptual framework to guide this study.Influencing factors contained two aspects.On the one hand,demographic factors included gender,teaching age,teaching phase,teaching area,and education background.On the other hand,four main factors of the UTAUT model such as performance expectancy,effort expectancy,social influence,and facilitating conditions were investigated.A questionnaire was distributed to 211 in-service K-12 EFL teachers.Ten of them were invited to participate in semistructured interviews.Through data analysis by using SPSS 26.0,the findings of this study indicated that:(1)K-12 EFL teachers’ acceptance level and use situation of AIEd technologies are both optimistic but still conservative;(2)demographic factors exert no significant impact on EFL teachers’ behavior intention,user behavior,and attitudes towards AIEd technologies;(3)among the four influencing factors in UTAUT model,Performance Expectancy and Facilitating Conditions have a significant positive impact on EFL teachers’ Behavioral Intention to use AIEd technologies in their English teaching process in primary and secondary schools,while Effort Expectancy has a significant negative impact.On the contrary,Social Influence has no significant influence and it is not a key influencing factor.Based on these results,both academic and practical implications,along with suggestions for teacher training were put forward in order to provide recommendations to improve K-12 EFL teachers’acceptance level of AIEd technologies and inform society and the education field to seek a better AI education environment,particularly for EFL teaching and learning.