Teacher educators’ adoption of artificial intelligence: A qualitative UTAUT study

The growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has created a need to understand how teacher educators engage with it. While technology acceptance research has focused on teachers and applied the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) through quantitative models, teacher educators’ AI use remains underexplored. This study employs UTAUT as a framework to examine factors shaping teacher educators’ acceptance and use of AI in teacher education in Türkiye. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 teacher educators and analysed using deductive and inductive coding. The findings suggest that the constructs of performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and facilitating conditions (FC) remained relevant, though several acquired context-specific meanings and extensions in teacher education. Trust qualified PE, and AI literacy reframed EE, while student expectations and a sense of professional responsibility extended SI. Ethical assurance, in turn, operated as a precondition for behavioural intention.