Between Promise and Practice: Bridging Ethical Artificial Intelligence Literacy Gaps Across Students, Educators, and Policy

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence has become part of everyday academic work despite many questions centring around its ethical, pedagogical, and institutional aspects. This paper synthesises the results of two questionnaire studies from the European higher educational context, one administered with students (n = 226) and another with instructors (n = 256). Parallel five-point scales measured AI literacy, motivation, ethics, intention, and support. Independent-samples t-tests revealed significant group differences: students rated their ethical awareness higher than instructors, while instructors reported stronger willingness to experiment with AI tools and reported higher behavioural intention, which might be because students tend to view ethics through their immediate coursework practices, whereas teachers interpret it through the lack of institutional clarity and treat is as a question of integrity. Cluster analysis of instructors identified three user groups that differed in several literacy dimensions, with the scale of ethics providing a clear distinction. Correlation analyses indicated that instructors’ moral awareness and intention grow parallel with institutional and social support, while students’ confidence and readiness correlate mostly with self-efficacy and collaboration rather than with formal instruction.