The Emotional cost of Automation Exploring Teacher Anxiety and Role Identity in AI- Augmented Classrooms

The current study examined the impact of AI integration on the classes into the expression of teacher anxiety and the role identity of in-service teachers in the state of Pakistan (Punjab). It used a quantitative and cross sectional correlation design according to which the sample examined a stratified randomisation of 384 researchers who worked in the government and the private schools and colleges representing the secondary and higher secondary sectionsThe sample was also gender wide, qualification and experienced wise with most of the teachers being at mid-age of the career and held masters. The results showed there were critical relations between teacher anxiety-role identity (r= -0.42) and AI-integration (r= -0.35) and the role- identity-AI integration (r= 0.47). The perception of AI as the tool of facilitation served as a significant predictor of whether a person would adopt it ( 0.48, p < 0.001) and explained the variance to 23 percent using regression analysis. Chi-square results indicated that the higher the rate of AI integration, the higher the anxiety levels especially among the experienced teachers. The interviewing process pointed to the absence of anxiety as not being qualified but having problem coping with the new technologies without relevant institutional support. The findings are in concordance with Technology Acceptance Model in the sense that perceived ease of use along with perceived usefulness are factors that highlight a very important role.