Digital skills shield future educators from AI anxiety

This elevated digital literacy is not just a theoretical asset - it plays a crucial role in how future educators perceive and manage the technological shifts around them. The presence of high digital literacy across diverse dimensions implies that these individuals are not only comfortable with technology but also poised to leverage it for instructional innovation.

The concerns about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the education sector are growing among future educators. A new empirical study sheds light on how Turkish pre-service teachers perceive AI and whether their digital literacy can serve as a buffer against emerging anxieties.

The research, titled “Are Turkish Pre-Service Teachers Worried About AI? A Study on AI Anxiety and Digital Literacy”, was published in the journal AI & Society. It rigorously examines the intersection of digital fluency and emotional response to AI through a robust statistical analysis of 221 teacher candidates across Turkish universities.

The findings are both timely and illuminating, especially as nations roll out AI in classrooms. The study not only quantifies the anxiety levels of pre-service teachers but also explores how specific dimensions of digital literacy, attitude, technical skills, cognition, and social engagement, impact their confidence and apprehension toward AI integration in education.

How anxious are future educators about AI?

The study found that Turkish pre-service teachers experience moderate levels of anxiety about artificial intelligence. The average score on the AI Anxiety Scale was 3.28 on a 7-point Likert scale. Interestingly, the concern was not uniformly distributed across all aspects of AI. Anxiety was highest in the dimensions of job replacement (mean score: 3.94), sociotechnical blindness (4.08)—the fear of losing control over AI—and AI configuration (3.67), which relates to discomfort with the merging of human-like and robotic features. In contrast, anxiety around learning AI-related skills was relatively low, scoring just 2.23.

This nuanced profile suggests that pre-service teachers are not fundamentally averse to learning about AI but are more concerned with how AI could reshape their professional roles. The worry is less about understanding the technology and more about its existential and societal impacts—chiefly job security and ethical implications. These insights align with global findings showing that educators, while optimistic about AI's instructional potential, often express concern about its automation capabilities and the possibility of dehumanizing the teaching process.

How digitally literate are pre-service teachers?

According to the study, digital literacy levels among the participants were high. The composite digital literacy score was 3.69, and all four sub-dimensions scored well above average: attitude (3.92), technical (3.52), cognitive (3.54), and social (3.53). These findings were validated using the Turkish adaptation of Ng’s Digital Literacy Scale, showing consistency with previous national and international studies that underscore the growing digital competence among new generations of teachers.

This elevated digital literacy is not just a theoretical asset - it plays a crucial role in how future educators perceive and manage the technological shifts around them. The presence of high digital literacy across diverse dimensions implies that these individuals are not only comfortable with technology but also poised to leverage it for instructional innovation. Courses embedded within Turkish teacher education programs, especially since reforms introduced in 2018, have likely contributed to this readiness, offering both mandatory and elective modules in educational technologies and media literacy.

Does digital literacy predict AI anxiety?

One of the study’s most important contributions lies in its statistical modeling of the relationship between digital literacy and AI anxiety. Using stepwise regression analysis, the researchers found that only one sub-dimension of digital literacy, technical skills, significantly predicted AI anxiety levels. Specifically, the technical dimension accounted for 10.3% of the variance in AI anxiety, with a negative coefficient, indicating that higher technical proficiency correlates with lower anxiety.

This result has profound implications. It suggests that general familiarity with digital tools or positive attitudes toward technology are not enough to alleviate concerns about AI. What truly matters is practical competence - the ability to engage directly with technological tools, understand their mechanics, and adapt them for educational use. Other components like social engagement and cognitive understanding did not significantly influence anxiety levels, highlighting the need for hands-on, skill-based training over theoretical or collaborative digital literacy efforts.

This distinction is critical for policymakers and curriculum designers. While fostering a positive digital culture is valuable, it must be coupled with technical capacity-building if the aim is to alleviate AI-related fears and boost technology acceptance. The research also reflects broader psychological theories which suggest that uncertainty and perceived lack of control are major drivers of anxiety. Therefore, equipping teachers with technical skills could help them feel more in control and less threatened by AI.

Moreover, the findings echo recent international concerns. As seen in the European Union's 2023 Artificial Intelligence Act, there is increasing global recognition of the psychological and ethical implications of AI deployment. In this light, the Turkish study provides a culturally grounded yet globally relevant model for how teacher training programs can preemptively address technology-related anxiety.

The authors also note several limitations, such as the relatively small sample size and the use of self-report measures. Nonetheless, the methodological rigor, including use of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), high reliability scores (α = 0.94 for the overall AI Anxiety Scale), and robust regression diagnostics, lends considerable credibility to the results.