Exploring the links between school principals’ self-efficacy, open innovation mindset, transformational leadership, and artificial intelligence (AI) attitudes in Türkiye

This study tested a moderated mediation model of school principals’ self-efficacy effects on their artificial intelligence attitude, where transformational leadership was treated as the mediator and open innovation mindset as the moderator. Employing a cross-sectional survey design and gathering data from 393 school principals working in public schools across Türkiye, we performed a moderated mediation modelling with maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the structural links between our study variables. The results revealed the direct association between school principals’ self-efficacy and their artificial intelligence attitudes and the indirect association via transformational leadership. Our findings also added nuance to the global school leadership literature by suggesting that an open innovation mindset acted as a significant moderator of self-efficacy effects on both their transformational leadership and artificial intelligence attitude. This study provides a different perspective on school leadership by examining transformational leadership and other cognitive factors such as an open innovation mindset and self-efficacy that are effective in shaping school principals’ artificial intelligence attitude. Key implications for policy and practice were discussed.