Developing AI Literacy for Primary and Middle School Teachers in China: Based on a Structural Equation Modeling Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper studies the correlations among different dimensions of AI literacy of teachers. 

The experiment counts with an important number of collected surveys but I have some concerns on writing of the paper, and experiments themselves.   My recommendations, major and minor changes,to improve the paper are:  

-In the abstract, when AI appears the first time, it should be accompanied with whole words (Artificial Intelligence). Besides the abstract should start with one or two sentences introducing the problem to be solved, with its relevance.

-Authors use many acronyms which make difficult to follow the reading. In the same way acronyms are not used in figure 1, I recommend to avoid them in titles and text in general.  

-When authors say: "Previous studies identify four common dimensions" , this affirmation should be accompanied with the corresponding references of the previous studies.  

-When authors say: "According to Ng et al., this study analyzed the 48 situation of teachers’ AI literacy," the advances of that study and the new contribution of the present study should be made clearer.  

-I suggest citing these works: Döbler, N. A., & Bartnik, C. (2022). Normative Affordances Through and By Technology: Technological Mediation and Human Enhancement. International Journal Of Interactive Multimedia And Artificial Intelligence, 7(Special Issue on New Trends in Disruptive Technologies, Tech Ethics and Artificial Intelligence), 14-23. http://doi.org/10.9781/ijimai.2022.09.006   Criado, N., Ferrer, X., & Such, J. M. (2021). Attesting Digital Discrimination Using Norms. International Journal Of Interactive Multimedia And Artificial Intelligence, 6(Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence, Paving the Way to the Future), 16-23. http://doi.org/10.9781/ijimai.2021.02.008   Vestrucci, A., Lumbreras Sancho, S., & Oviedo, L. (2021). Can AI help us to understand belief? Sources, advances, limits, and future directions. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia & Artificial Intelligence, 7(1).  

-Check this sentence: "This study perceive that there are 5 components comprehensively address AI application with other aspects", relating instead of addressing?   

-Delete dot here: "properly. [37]." also there are some sentence with two dots together.  

-When authors say "The final version explains 97.1% of the true variance of it." I suppose they mean the final version of the survey but I do not understand well how that % is obtained.  

-When it is said "Additionally, the reliability of all selected items in this scale was tested using  Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega coefficients, and the corresponding results were obtained. Very satisfactory values were obtained for both coefficients" , instead of "very satisfactorily" some specific figures should be given. Section 3.3 should be more clear regarding the measures done.  

-Better justify the instruments used, especially the survey, which contains a few general questions for each dimension, which seems to be limited to prove the hipothesis in principle.  

-Discussion should be deeper and more related works should be mentioned there to situate the present study in the state-of-art works.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is of current interest.

The research hypotheses are clearly defined.

The structural model highlights the correlation between the analyzed variables.

Both the discussions and the conclusions are well developed.

Authors should pay attention to following aspects:

1. References must appear in the text in order. After number 26, number 64 appears.

2. All authors must be mentioned in the bibliography. (Papakonstantinou, A.; Batsaris, M.; Spondylidis, S.; et al.)

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

 

The presented article provides an up-to-date view of AI in our society today and mentions the need for teacher training. This article is meticulously developed and meets the desirable criteria of a research article. However, I suggest some improvements.

 

1.     The introduction presents current articles, mostly from the last five years. I suggest adding in line 32 that there are numerous studies worldwide that have investigated teachers' digital competence. I provide some useful references to include:

·       Gallardo-Montes, C.P., Rodríguez, A., Caurcel, M.J., & Capperucci, D. (2022). Functionality of apps for people with autism: comparison between educators from Florence and Granada. International Journal of Environmental Res. Public Health, 19, 7019. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127019

·       Cabero-Almenara, J., Fernández-Batanero, J.M., & Barroso, J. (2016). Teaching degree students: ICT and disability. Revista Electrónica de Investigación Educativa, 18(3), 106-120. https://bit.ly/3b11Yvu   

·       Fernández-Batanero, J.M., Román. P., & El Homrani, M. (2017). ICT and disability. Knowledge of primary education teachers in Andalusia. Aula Abierta, 46, 65-72. https://doi.org/10.17811/rifie.46.2017.65-72

The reason for including these articles is because the scarcity of training courses has been developed throughout this article, but it has not been mentioned that it has been investigated whether teachers are trained in ICT or not.

2.     Literature review:

-        Evaluating AI application (line 112) Are there studies that investigate the difficulties teachers encounter in AI? If so, it would be interesting to include them. If not, it could be said that there are no previous studies that analyse teachers' difficulties in applying AI in the classroom.

-        Throughout section 2, the benefits of AI, the learning support it provides and the challenge it poses for teachers are adequately detailed. All written information is well supported by very current previous studies.

-        Hypotheses are formulated and written following a prior description. The hypotheses are well formulated and related to the information provided from previous studies.

-        Section 2.2. is extremely interesting. The citation of Elon Musk keeps your attention while reading the document.

3.     Method:

-        Criteria for excluding invalid participants are clearly stated.

-        In the field of education (Social Sciences), there are usually more female than male participants. This is a very common trend. Authors are advised to indicate this in line 224. For example, one could write: "Bearing in mind the significant number of female participants, the sex and/or gender did not result in bias in this investigation, as studies in Social Science and Legal Science have a predominance of women (Gialamas et al., 2013)". The reference is this:

·       V. Gialamas, K. Nikolopouiou, G. Kutromanos, Student teachers' perceptions about the impact of internet usage on their learning and Jobs, Computers & Education 62 (Mar. 2013) 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.012  

-        The instrument is duly validated. Significant values from the exploratory factor analysis are provided.

-        Do the authors have the approval of the Human Research Ethics Committee, according to the criteria of the Helsinki Treaty? This approval is essential in current research. Authors are required to apply to their university's ethics committee.

4.     Results:

-        Correlation analysis shows strong correlations related to the age of the participants. Cronbach's alpha and factor loadings are adequate and valid.

-        The resulting model offers a good fit to the criteria evaluated.

-        The hypotheses formulated are confirmed and/or partially supported.

5.     Discussion: The discussion is well linked to previous studies and to the results obtained. The authors have highlighted and commented on the reasons for indicating that the hypotheses put forward have been confirmed.

6.     Conclusions and implications: Overall, this study showed that the AI literacy dimension of teachers is acceptable for the three educational stages analysed. The authors indicate that the government should take action to cultivate teachers' AI literacy, drawing up related policies or building some institutions for teacher education. Accordingly, the way in which training programs are designed to support the development of real competencies for teachers in digital societies needs to be rethought.

7.     Limitations and future research: The authors rightly point out that the results obtained should not be generally extrapolated to the all stages of education. This statement is well substantiated throughout the paragraph.

8.     References: Most references are well designed and conform to the MDPI standard. However, some are not. References 3, 4 and 37 need to be reviewed. These references seem incomplete.

 

This article is of high quality, but I suggest to pay attention to the indicated improvements.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Accept as is

Author Response

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