The Relationship Between Teachers’ Age, Gender and Their Will and Skill to Teach Artificial Intelligence

An aging workforce is confronted with the accelerating changes brought about by digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI). This also affects the teaching profession, where the workforce is not only aging but also predominantly female. Some studies have shown that women tend to have a more negative attitude towards AI technology than men. Therefore, the question arises as to whether older teachers and female teachers are prepared to deal with AI-related changes, or whether age and female gender are associated with lower will and skill to engage with AI and teach it to students. We investigated how teachers’ age and gender relate to the cognitive and affective aspects of teachers’ attitudes towards teaching AI (will) as well as their knowledge about teaching AI (skill). In a sample of 177 teachers, we found that teacher age and female gender were positively related to cognitive beliefs about the importance of teaching AI to students, while age was negatively related to positive affect when engaging with AI. Furthermore, older and female teachers found it more difficult to learn about AI and had less AI content knowledge about basic concepts. Our findings suggest that the age and gender of teachers should be considered when designing teacher training programs on AI.