Research on middle school teachers’ technostress empowered by artificial intelligence

TL;DR

This study explores how technostress affects middle school teachers when adopting AI in education and identifies ways to reduce it.

Contribution

The study introduces a framework linking personal competence, role conflict, and organizational support to technostress in AI adoption by teachers.

Findings

Technostress levels are generally low, but stress sources vary among teacher groups.

Digital awareness and suitable technology features reduce technostress, while role conflict increases it.

Organizational support is mediated by these factors in influencing technostress.

Abstract

Technostress is an essential factor in predicting middle school teachers’ willingness to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) in future educational practices and their actual use of such technologies. This study examines technostress among middle school teachers in the context of AI integration and explores how personal competence (including digital awareness, digital technology knowledge and skills, and digital application competence), role conflict, organizational support, and technological features influence technostress.

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is employed as the theoretical underpinning for the present research, using survey data from 301 middle school teachers, a path model was constructed to analyze these relationships.

The results indicate that the overall level of technostress is relatively low; however, different teacher groups experience distinct sources of stress. Specifically, appropriate technological features and strong digital awareness effectively alleviate technostress, while role conflict intensifies it. Furthermore, these factors play a significant mediating role between organizational support and technostress.

Based on these findings, the study proposes several strategies to mitigate technostress among middle school teachers. First, a tiered and category based approach should be adopted to provide targeted support according to teachers’ actual needs. Second, it is important to balance the relationship between technological supply and educational demand to ensure sustainable implementation. Third, showcasing typical successful cases can help enhance teachers’ digital awareness and confidence in using AI. Finally, strengthen role positioning and work flexibility to ease teachers’ role conflict. These strategies offer practical guidance for educational administrators seeking to promote the effective integration of AI technologies in middle school education.

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