Exploring AI Literacy Through the Expectancy-Value Framework: A Mixed-Methods Study of Chinese High School Students

Artificial intelligence is important because it has the potential to influence every aspect of our daily lives. From solving problems to creating new opportunities, artificial intelligence will be a huge part of the future society. This study aims to explore Chinese high school students AI literacy from the four dimensions: awareness, usage, evaluation, and ethics by using the expectancy-value theory. A mixed-methods approach was employed, including surveys of 478 students to assess their understanding of artificial intelligence and how much they know about it, along with qualitative interviews to explore specific suggestions towards the improvement of AI courses in school and AI applications in their schoolwork. Quantitative findings revealed that there are significant differences in the four dimensions of AI literacy that are: ethics, awareness, usage, and evaluation with tenth grade students showing higher scores. Students AI literacy was influenced by their expectancy and value beliefs. There is no significant difference between school types for awareness, evaluation, usage but ethics. These findings highlight the impact of AI-related resources on students ethical perceptions. The structural equation modelling revealed the hypothesized model is a good representation of the data. Then the multi group equation modelling revealed the hypothesized model fits well across groups. Here, the groups mean students who participated in AI clubs or not. Qualitative themes highlighted the benefits of AI in enhancing productivity and learning, challenges in evaluating AI-generated information, ethical concerns about artificial intelligence usage, as well as the desire for more support and education to enhance AI literacy. The study emphasizes the importance of integrating AI literacy education into school curricula to enhance students' understanding and practical application of AI.