My peer-reviewed article, AI Adoption Among Europe’s School Evaluators: Awareness and Challenges, was published in the Malta Journal of Education on 7 May 2025. It examines an increasingly important question: how do those responsible for external school evaluation perceive artificial intelligence, and what might help them use it responsibly?
Drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the study explores evaluators’ awareness of AI, perceptions of its usefulness and ease of use, and the factors influencing their willingness to adopt it. The mixed-methods research involved 56 questionnaire respondents and six semi-structured interviews with European school evaluators.
What emerged from the research?
The findings suggest cautious optimism about AI’s potential to improve the efficiency and consistency of external evaluation. Yet familiarity with AI and actual adoption vary, and confidence in the technology cannot be assumed. Training needs, infrastructure and ethical concerns — particularly privacy, bias and transparency — remain significant obstacles.
For me, one important implication is that AI adoption in school evaluation should not be treated simply as a technological upgrade. It requires professional learning, secure and appropriate systems, clear guidance on ethical use and continued reliance on human professional judgement. The potential lies in supporting evaluators with aspects of their work while retaining the scrutiny and contextual understanding that meaningful school evaluation demands.
The full article is open access: AI Adoption Among Europe’s School Evaluators: Awareness and Challenges, Malta Journal of Education, 6(1), pp. 22–43 (2025).
For more of my published research and professional contributions, see the Publications page.
Editorial note (October 2026): This entry was added retrospectively to the blog archive and dated June 2025 to accompany the original publication.
