Abstract
The research explored the role of organisational support for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in predicting middle leaders’ GenAI integration in school leadership work, with a focus on GenAI self-efficacy and valuing as mediators of that effect. The study was based on social cognition theory and a sample of 277 Israeli middle leaders from public elementary and secondary schools. The data were analysed using SPSS and the PROCESS macro. The findings indicate that support for GenAI positively influences both GenAI self-efficacy and valuing but only GenAI self-efficacy emerged as a significant mediator. The results expand the limited empirical scholarship on AI in school leadership, most of which is non-empirical. The results suggest that middle leaders’ confidence in their ability to use GenAI plays a critical role in their engagement with the technology and that organisational support helps promote GenAI adoption. Middle leaders’ GenAI self-efficacy was shown to play a key role in channelling the beneficial effect of school support on integration in practice. The results and their implications are discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 17411432251361251 |
| Journal | Educational Management Administration and Leadership |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 29 Jul 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords
- AI integration
- AI self-efficacy
- AI valuing
- middle leaders
- school leadership
- school support for AI