Chapter 8 Opinion of Spanish teachers about

Artificial Intelligence and its use in education

Juan-Francisco Álvarez-Herrero1

Abstract Currently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to be used in all areas

and education is no stranger to it. There are already good practices in which the
benefits of using AI in the classroom are confirmed, but it also generates many fears
and misgivings on the part of teachers. This research attempts to know what the
opinion of Spanish teachers is about AI and its use in the classroom. For this pur-
pose, a short questionnaire created ad hoc was developed, validated and dissemi-
nated through different social networks and educational channels. This question-
naire was answered by 599 teachers from all Spanish regions and educational stages.
From the results it can be extracted that Spanish teachers do not have much
knowledge about AI, nor about its possibilities of implementation in the classroom.
They do see more possibilities for improving teacher professional development than
for improving teaching-learning processes. And they recognize that they need train-
ing in its use. In conclusion, it should be added that in addition to effective and
efficient training, the possible implementation of AI in education also requires crit-
ical reflection on the ethics and pedagogical functionalities of AI.

Keywords Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED),

teachers’ perception, Digital Competencies, Spanish teachers, teacher digital com-
petence, Information and Communication Technology, social networks, ChatGPT,
digital technology, emerging technology, generative AI, ethics of the AI, critical
reflection, pedagogical functionalities of AI.

1 J. F. Álvarez-Herrero (*)

University of Alicante, Education Faculty, Department of Didactic General and Specific

Training, Calle Aeroplano s/n, San Vicente del Raspeig (Alicante), 03690, Spain
e-mail: juanfran.alvarez@ua.es
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9988-8286
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Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that tries to understand

and simulate the intelligence and behavior of humans (Wang, 2019). In recent
months, there has been a huge appearance of applications and tools that try, in ad-
dition to pursuing the objectives of AI, to make life easier and more effective for
people. Among other functions, the AI makes it possible for certain tasks not to be
carried out by humans or for tasks in which people could spend a lot of time, thanks
to the AI, they are carried out in a few seconds (Mitchell, 2019).
If you have had virtual assistants (Alexa, Siri, etc.) and chatbots that provide an-
swers to frequently asked questions in more than one administration, organization
or company for years; In recent months, generative AI applications have gained
special prominence. Particularly one of the best known by society in general is
OpenAI ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a chatbot or AI program designed to be able to in-
teract with people in a close language and be able to answer the questions that are
asked. Other applications that have become quite famous are those that allow you
to generate original images from a simple description (prompt). Among the latter
we find applications such as: Dall·E, DreamStudio or Lexica IA.
With these premises, it is not surprising that AI is also incorporated into the edu-
cational field (Chen et al., 2020). And there are already many experiences in which
the use of AI by both teachers and students, allows improving the teaching-learning
processes.
Among the many advantages that we can find that AI offers in the educational
field, we can mention:
• Access to a multitude of resources and learning materials. From those based
on content to also complete pedagogical proposals to be taken to the class-
room. In addition, these resources will be able to be personalized and con-
textualized to each specific case, attending to the interests and needs of both
the teacher and the students, the main protagonists of the teaching-learning
processes. AI applications can be used that are capable of generating a di-
dactic unit, a learning situation or simple learning activities, adapted to the
situation and the context that is requested. Likewise, the AI can also suggest
books, articles, videos, and other content necessary for student learning.
• Linking to what was said in the previous section, AI enables and guarantees
the personalization of learning. AI through different assessment tools (for
example) is capable of meeting the individual needs of students (Zawacki-
Richter et al., 2019). There are tools that can offer immediate feedback to
students, including personalized recommendations for activities indicated to
follow the normal development of each student's learning. And all this, fa-
voring equity at all times, treating students fairly, without favoring one stu-
dent over another (du Boulay, 2022).
• Support and feedback in the evaluation and monitoring of students. The AI
offers the teacher tools that allow the management, analysis and feedback of
each student and immediately (Ali & Abdel-Haq, 2018; Zawacki-Richter et
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al., 2019). There are tools that allow you to analyze the answers and thus
give immediate feedback in all types of questionnaires, tests or exams, with
which the student can be immediately aware of the mistakes made and thus
correct them quickly.
• Virtual and intelligent assistants and tutors. AI-based virtual assistants, as
well as chatbots, can offer additional reinforcement when students are out-
side the classroom, in which they get answers to frequently asked questions,
obtain additional or complementary information on certain topics that are
being discussed in class, as well as other educational resources that can ben-
efit the student in their learning (Ocaña et al., 2019; Zawacki-Richter et al.,
2019).
• Data analysis and decision making. By being able to analyze large amounts
of data, AI with its tools can extract a lot of useful information to support all
informed decisions by teachers (Ali & Abdel-Haq, 2018). Thus, educational
analytics tools that use AI make it possible to identify patterns of student
performance, and thereby detect those areas that require improvement, as
well as help teachers design more effective strategies for learning (Zawacki-
Richter et al. al., 2019).
Thus, some examples of successful good practices in which AI has been imple-
mented in education are:
• Achieve physical education teaching in an individualized, precise and intel-
ligent way. This has been achieved by incorporating an AI educational robot
based on voice interaction into classes, and which allows building a hybrid
mode of teaching physical education to provide personalized education to
students (Yang et al., 2020).
• The use of chatbots improves student learning outcomes, and it does so more
in education students than in primary and secondary education. Likewise, it
is verified that short interventions have a greater effect on student learning
results compared to long interventions (Wu & Yu, 2023).
• Whether or not to use an integrated approach of AI models and learning
analytics (LA) feedback in an online engineering course to examine differ-
ences in the collaborative learning effect of students shows that the inte-
grated approach increased student engagement. students, improved collabo-
rative learning performance, and strengthened student satisfaction about
learning. Hence, AI is once again beneficial for student learning (Ouyang et
al., 2023).
But there are also many voices that warn of the dangers and fears that the use of
AI in the educational field entails. Among the main fears that teachers contemplate
when using AI in education are:
• Fear of being replaced. AI is seen as a threat that can replace the role of
the teacher in the classroom. It is thought that digital technology can
perform teaching tasks more effectively than a teacher can do (Lin et
al., 2022).
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• Growth of the digital divide and inequality between different groups.

The use of AI can increase the already existing digital gap between
those students who have greater access to technology compared to those
students who do not. In this way, students who do not have access to
technology and AI will be left out of learning compared to students who
do have access to AI and technology (McGrath et al., 2023).
• Universal teaching, far removed from the personalization of learning. It
is believed that AI will generate universal, standard teaching that does
not meet the personal needs of each student and only generally meets
global needs. Likewise, this non-personalized teaching leads to a lack
of any emotional support that a teacher can offer to students (Shin,
2020).
• There are fears of a lack of control of the data, and that the privacy and
security of the same is not ensured. AI collects and analyzes a multitude
of data in order to be functional. This fosters mistrust among teachers,
who fear that these data could be compromised and exposed and acces-
sible to anyone. And with this, that this data is misused by being able to
fall into the hands of people without ethics and control (Bewersdorff et
al., 2023).
• Excessive dependence on technology. An abusive use of AI leads to a
dependency on it that has a negative impact on the skills and abilities of
the students. By making it easier and faster for them to have a problem
solved by the AI instead of them, this will reduce their ability to solve
problems on their own and with it, they will have less and less intelli-
gence and capacity. The same could be said of other skills such as crit-
ical thinking, interpersonal communication, reasoning, mental calcula-
tion, etc. (Antonenko & Abramowitz, 2023).
But there are three important considerations to be made:
• The AI is not going to replace the teacher, but rather it is going to com-
plement it, it is going to make it possible to make them a better teacher
because they will be able to develop their skills both at the level of pro-
fessional development and in their work towards the teaching-learning
processes (Pedró et al., 2019).
• AI will continue to be with us and we must take advantage of its benefits
for education. It is only necessary to regulate it and train teachers in its
use, so that in this way they make responsible and effective use, taking
into account the ethical and moral considerations that are involved in
the teaching-learning processes with the use of AI (Baídoo-Anu &
Owusu-Ansah, 2023).
• The dizzying pace of the development of new AI applications and tools
every minute requires teachers to always be willing to train and renew
themselves, always learning, in order to influence the improvement of
their students' learning (Chounta et al., 2022).
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Hence, the objective of this research seeks to find out what is the opinion that
Spanish teachers have about the use of artificial intelligence in education. It also
seeks to answer questions such as:
• What knowledge do Spanish teachers have about AI?
• What applications do you know?
• What training needs would they have in the hypothetical case of imple-
menting AI in the classroom?
To carry out this research, the following steps were: construct a brief questionnaire
that was passed to those teachers present on social networks who wanted to partic-
ipate; The results obtained were analyzed and compared with those obtained in other
similar investigations in Spain and other countries; and with all this some conclu-
sions were reached that can be read at the end of this document.

Methodology

This research is exploratory, not experimental, and it tries to collect the opinions
of teachers from all over Spain through a simple questionnaire created ad hoc, about
the perception they have about AI and its implementation in education.
The instrument for data collection that has been used responds to a simple self-
made questionnaire. The questionnaire, which we call EDUvsIA, was submitted to
the judgment and validation by 10 education experts who are currently working and
researching in AI. The 10 experts are teachers and there are from all educational
stages considered in the research. The first version that was passed to the experts,
underwent some changes and modifications as a result of the recommendations and
comments made by the experts.
The questionnaire is clearly divided into two parts. The first one with questions of
a sociodemographic nature (sex, age, Spanish region, educational stage in which the
teaching profession is exercised, seniority or years of teaching experience, owner-
ship of the center in which they work, and the specialty or nature of the subjects
taught). The second part only contains 6 quick selection questions. Three of these
questions are assessed using a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is very little or not
at all and 5 is a lot or everything.
1.- To what extent could you say that you feel familiar with AI? 1 (very little or
not at all), to 5 (a lot or expert).
2.- What AI applications do you know?
• None
• Basically, ChatGPT and little else
• Some Generative AI: ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney, and some more
• All kinds of AI applications, including personalization and machine learning
or even programming
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3.- Do you think that AI has applications in the educational field that allow it to
be implemented by improving the teaching-learning processes of (and with) stu-
dents? 1 (very few or none), to 5 (many or infinite).
4.- Do you consider that AI has its application in the educational field that allows
teachers to improve professionally and competently? 1 (very little or not at all), to
5 (a lot or infinite).
5.- What would be your position regarding the use of AI in the educational field,
with your students?
• Its use in education should be prohibited
• It should be regulated/controlled, leaving some options and prohibiting oth-
ers
• It should be used, but always under the supervision and guidance of the
teacher (who, in turn, has previously been trained in AI)
• It should be possible to use it without limits, which implies changes and
adaptations in the ways of teaching and learning.
• Other:
6.- If hypothetically it were decided to implement AI in the educational field in
the not-too-distant future, do you feel that:
• I would be ready for it
• I would need to train
• I would train myself to know how to use it on a personal level and to detect
its use among my students, but I would not use it with it in class
• I would train in AI, but I would not use it
• I would refuse to train and use it
This questionnaire was publicized through social networks such as Twitter (now
known as X), Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and instant messaging such as
WhatsApp. It was always done through channels related to the teaching function
and AI. In the different networks that allow it, the dissemination of this question-
naire was made using the relevant educational hashtags that allowed it to be given
greater visibility.
The questionnaire was open for one week, between May 23 and May 30, 2023.

Results

A total of 599 valid responses were collected from Spanish teachers, from differ-
ent educational stages.
The sample obtained is described below:
Gender: 314 women (52.4%), 284 men (47.4%) and 1 non-binary (0.2%)
Regarding the age of the teachers, grouped into different age groups, we can see
the results obtained in Table 1:
Table 1. Age of participating teachers
Age n %
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< 25 years 2 0.3

25 - 35 69 11.5
36 – 46 195 32.6
47 – 57 243 40.6
> 57 years 90 15.0

These results regarding the age of the teachers are in line with the reality of the
teaching staff in Spain, since it is a widely aged group, which in a few years would
need a massive generational replacement.
Regarding the educational stages in which teachers work, it is found that responses
are given mostly from the stages of Secondary (254, 42.4%), primary education
(144, 24%), professional training (68, 11.3%), education university (63, 10.5%) and
early childhood education (37, 6.2%). The rest corresponds to artistic education,
official language schools, adult schools and non-regulated education.
The teaching experience occurs mainly in those teachers with an experience of
between 11 and 20 years (199, 33.2%), between 21 and 30 years (172, 28.7%), more
than 31 years (98, 5.2%), while less than 5 years had 72 responses and between 5
and 10 years, 58 responses.
Regarding the type of center, 438 belong to public centers, 114 to subsidized cen-
ters and 47 to private centers.
For the statistical analysis of the results, the statistical software IBM SPSS Statis-
tics v. 26.0.
Regarding the quantitative assessment results, they are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Knowledge and possibilities of AI in education
m Typical deviation variance
1.- Knowledge of AI 2.51 1.092 1.194
3.- AI improves the teaching-learning process 3.53 1.169 1.366
4.- AI improves teacher professional development 3.69 1.110 1.232

In the results of this table 2 it is verified that the knowledge of Spanish teachers
about AI does not reach an average knowledge, standing at a value of 2.51. They do
see great possibilities for the use of AI in education, and these are greater in the case
that it is used in the professional development of teachers (3.69), compared to using
it to improve teaching-learning processes. (3.53). The values of the standard devia-
tions of the three questions confirm that there is a great disparity between the an-
swers given, finding answers that go from the minimum value (1) to the maximum
(5).
Regarding in Figure 1 the knowledge that teachers have about AI applications and
tools, we can see in the following graph how the knowledge is very diverse, being
the majority of those teachers who have basic knowledge (51.7%), followed by
those teachers who know some application more besides ChatGPT.
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Fig 1. Knowledge of AI applications by teachers.

On the use that should be made of AI in the educational field, there is much more
consensus, since 387 teachers (64.6%) would agree to use it in education, but always
under the supervision and guidance of the teacher (who, at his time, has been pre-
viously trained in AI). As can be seen in Figure 2. It should also be noted that only
19 of the 599 teachers would prohibit its use.

Fig 2. Use that can be given to AI in education.

And, finally, regarding the need or not in training in AI, a large majority of almost
70% (418 teachers), recognize that they would need to be trained so that in the hy-
pothetical case that AI was implemented in the classroom, to know how to do it.
Also noteworthy is that only 12 teachers acknowledge that they would refuse to
train in AI, and another 8 would train, but would not implement it in the classroom,
as can be seen in Figure 3.
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Fig. 3. AI training needs in the hypothetical case that it had to be implemented in the classroom.

Discussion

We have seen how Spanish teachers admit that they do not have notorious
knowledge of AI or of AI applications and tools that can be used in education. This
leads them to recognize a need to train in AI in the hypothetical case that it is im-
plemented in education. However, although they see possibilities of being used in
education, the expectations they have in using it to improve their own professional
development are higher than implementing AI in the classroom to improve the
teaching-learning processes of their students.
In other similar investigations, teachers from Morocco, Turkey and Sweden also
express their fears towards AI, but recognize that its application in technical assis-
tance for teaching tasks can be very positive (Douali et al., 2022; Gocen & Aydemir,
2020; McGrath et al., 2023). Specifically, in the study by McGrath et al. (2023) it
is said that they identify fears and skepticism on the part of teachers towards AI in
its use in higher education, mainly transferring their concerns to equity and respon-
sibility, and the lack of knowledge about AI and the resources for it. engage with
AI in teaching practices.
In Estonia, despite the fact that teachers acknowledge having limited knowledge
of AI and how it could help them in their teaching work, they confirm that they see
AI as an opportunity in the educational world, since it would allow them to be more
efficient and effective. in their work practice, given that AI would offer them that
support (Chounta et al., 2022).
Something similar occurs with future Turkish teachers, who see AI in education
as something that brings both benefits and risks (Haseski, 2019).
Like Humble and Mozelius (2022), we are in favor of the fact that sooner rather
than later, a debate should be opened on the use and role of AI in education so as
not to fall into the error of an artificial education instead of a AI in education. Even,
as Zawacki-Richter et al. (2019), ethical and educational approaches in the imple-
mentation of AI in education should be explored, since a lack of critical reflection
on the challenges and risks that it entails is detected, as well as a weak connection
with pedagogical theoretical perspectives.

Conclusions

Most Spanish teachers do not feel familiar with AI. What's more, only a small
percentage of teachers know of an AI application and tool that goes beyond the most
popular at the moment, such as: ChatGPT. This leads them to request training in AI,
to be able to carry out an implementation of AI in the classroom, but always under
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their supervision and guidance. However, they acknowledge that they feel more
confident using AI to improve their professional development as teachers, than us-
ing it in the classroom to improve teaching-learning processes. These results are
very much in line with those obtained in other countries, where it is also observed
that, although they are afraid of AI, they feel that it can bring them benefits,
There is still a distrust of the educational use that can be made of AI in the class-
room, and to address these fears and promote greater knowledge and security, qual-
ity training is required in the use and conscientious implementation of AI in the
classroom. This implementation must have a reflection from the ethical and educa-
tional point of view, in order to make efficient and effective use of it, and not fall
into errors previously committed with other resources and digital devices when in-
corporating them into the educational world has been considered.
This critical reflection is also necessary to deal with all the fears and inconven-
iences that teachers consider more frequently with the use of AI in education, and
thus prevent the real ones and deny the fictitious ones. There is still a long way to
go, but we cannot continue doubting since AI is evolving at a dizzying pace that
means that from today to tomorrow applications and resources that are much better
than those available yesterday have emerged.
Although one of the limitations of this research is in the selection of the sample,
where only teachers present in social networks have been able to learn about it and
participate, it does represent a general feeling of the teachers, since precisely these
teachers are the ones who they habitually make use of digital technologies in their
centers and institutions. Those teachers who are not very interested in AI and its
applications in education did not participate either. But precisely these limitations
are the starting point for future research, so as not to make the same mistakes.
As future lines of research, we plan to obtain a larger sample and in which those
teachers who are not so connected to digital technologies are also represented; In
order to try to verify if the results remain the same or vary with respect to those
presented here. Likewise, the aim is to promote and carry out training for active
teachers on how to implement and use AI in classrooms, both to improve the pro-
fessional development of teachers and the learning of their students.

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