Educational Horizons: Mapping the Terrain of Artificial Intelligence Integration in B ulgarian Educational Settings (2024)

Abstract: The role of artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) has recently become a major topic of discussion and future planning. This article presents data from a large-scale survey involving 1463 Bulgarian educators in primary, secondary, and high schools. The results revealed that 70.30% of the teachers were familiar with or somewhat familiar with the existence of AI applications. Chatbots were the most popular among the surveyed teachers, with ChatGPT ranking as the most familiar. The teachers were almost equally split between those who reported use and those who declared nonuse of AI technology for instructional purposes. A significant association was found between the teachers’ familiarity with and use of AI technology and their age-related generational traits. The younger educators (up to 40 years of age) were associated with higher use of AI technology as a support tool for creating lesson plans, lesson content, tests, and exams. The outlined tendencies can be used to inform policy, professional development, and future research in the realm of AI-driven education.

## introduction the concept of artificial intelligence in education (aied) can be traced back to the previous century and the establishment of the international aied society (iaied) in 1997 @xcite . since then, aied has been discussed in scientific forums and journals, but the actual application of ai in education has only recently emerged as a major topic in both the educational community and the general public. the present interest in ai has been ignited by the fast development of various ai apps capable of producing human-like content, audio, and video materials from written prompts @xcite . it is now evident that ai-based educational technology opens up limitless new opportunities for educators and learners, simultaneously posing numerous challenges stemming from the unknowns @xcite . aied research is currently shifting its focus towards the role of ai in teaching practice, encompassing various aspects of its implementation, including the attitudes and readiness of educators and students for the successful integration of ai-based technology, suitable methodological approaches to the organization of ai-based instruction and assessment, setting ethical standards, and the actual observance of those standards @xcite @xcite . ## methodology the present paper is based on a survey study about the role of artificial intelligence (ai) in the bulgarian school system, including primary school, secondary school and high school. the survey was administered online through google forms to school principals from all over bulgaria. they were asked by the researcher to share the survey with the teachers in their schools and to encourage them to respond. the study was approved by the committee of scientific ethics in the faculty of mathematics and informatics at plovdiv university "paisii hilendarski" under protocol №1252/31.01.2024. prior to answering any survey questions, the teachers provided an informed consent regarding their participation in the study and the use of the data in academic publications. they were also assured that their responses would remain anonymous. apart from the demographic questions, the survey included 26 target items, organized in four sections: 1) teachers' familiarity with ai; 2) teachers' opinions on the application of ai in education, 3) the influence of ai on the teaching practice; 4) the place of ai in teacher training programs. this paper is based on part of the survey questions that were considered the most relevant to its purpose as stated below. ## discussion the survey data on which this paper is based was collected at the beginning of 2024, when a variety of new ai applications appeared on the internet and caught the attention of the general public, the media, and the educational community. the bulgarian ministry of education was also involved in discussions and the preparation of guidelines for the use of ai in the education system. thus, 2024 can be identified as the unofficial starting point of a long-term process of integrating ai in the educational context. at this onset, the use of ai in teaching practice was not regulated by methodological directions and was mostly driven by the personal motivation of the teachers themselves. our results showed that of the 1463 teachers who completed the survey, 70.30% were familiar with or somewhat familiar with the existence of ai applications. given the very recent release of ai apps for general use, this percentage appears high and promising for future teacher training initiatives. the rate of familiarity was the highest among the younger generation of teachers (gen z and gen y) and the lowest among the teachers over 60 years of age (baby boomers). the finding is not surprising given the trends reported in other studies regarding generational differences in attitudes to technology in general and to ai in particular @xcite @xcite . chatbots were the most popular among the surveyed teachers, with chatgpt ranking as the most familiar. much less familiar were video, audio, and image generators and the least familiar were virtual human generators. given that chatgpt has been the subject of several research studies discussing both the benefits and drawbacks of the app for teaching and student assessment, its popularity among the surveyed teachers was predicted @xcite @xcite . regarding the application of ai in teaching practice, the teachers were almost equally split between those who reported frequent to occasional use and those who declared nonuse at the time of the survey. the highest percentage of teachers who reported using ai were of the younger generations (gen x and gen y), and the lowest percentage was in the baby boomers' age group. our findings can indirectly be linked to the postulation that insufficient or lacking ai literacy may adversely affect teachers' confidence in using ai-based technology (al-furaih and al-awidi, 2020; @xcite . presumably, younger educators-who are naturally more technologically literate than their older counterparts-have the self-confidence to experiment with ai technology as a support tool for creating lesson plans, lesson content, tests, and exams. although, to a lesser degree, ai was reportedly being utilized in homework assignments and individual and team tasks. ## conclusion the overarching conclusion that can be drawn on the basis of the reported results is that at the onset of introducing ai applications in the bulgarian education system, the majority of the school teachers were familiar with current ai apps and were to a certain extent using ai technology in their teaching. this fact indicates a favorable inclination towards ai technology and the existence of some, although unsystematized, baseline knowledge and competence that can serve to inform policy, professional development, and future research in the realm of ai-driven education.