International Community Engagement for Ethical and Critical Artificial Intelligence Use: Preparing Future Teachers for Digital Transformation in Education

The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education presents significant opportunities alongside ethical, pedagogical, and academic integrity challenges, particularly for future teachers. This article reports an international community engagement programme conducted through a collaboration between Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia, and Johor Business School, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia. The programme aimed to strengthen participants’ AI literacy by promoting ethical AI use, critical thinking, academic integrity, and responsible pedagogical practices. A participatory approach was employed through educational outreach, case-based discussions, collaborative group activities, presentation-back sessions, and structured reflection. Programme evaluation focused on participant engagement, authentic learning outputs, and facilitator observations rather than pre-test and post-test measurements. The findings indicate that participants developed a broader understanding of AI as a tool that should augment rather than replace human judgement. They demonstrated increased awareness of source verification, transparency, plagiarism prevention, privacy protection, and ethical decision-making while collaboratively producing classroom AI guidelines and instructional recommendations. The programme also fostered intercultural dialogue and reciprocal knowledge exchange between Indonesian and Malaysian participants, reinforcing the role of international community engagement in strengthening teacher preparedness for digital transformation. The initiative highlights the importance of integrating AI literacy, ethical responsibility, and critical evaluation into teacher education through sustainable international collaboration and authentic learning experiences.