Critical thinking awareness as a key to teacher self-efficacy in the age of artificial intelligence

The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has generated new training demands for teachers that go beyond technical skills, requiring critical competencies capable of addressing the ethical, pedagogical, and social challenges posed by this technology. Understanding how teachers develop the dispositions and skills needed to integrate AI reflectively has become a priority for educational systems. This study analyzes the relationship between general self-efficacy, critical thinking awareness, and AI literacy among pre-service and in-service teachers in Chile. A non-experimental quantitative design with a correlational-comparative approach was applied to an intentional sample of 1,169 participants. Validated scales and multivariate analyses were used to examine group differences and predictive relationships. The results indicate significant differences between pre-service and in-service teachers across all studied variables. Critical thinking awareness emerged as the strongest predictor of teaching self-efficacy in both profiles, underscoring its central role in fostering autonomous and informed pedagogical decision-making. AI literacy showed differential effects: positive among in-service teachers and ambivalent among pre-service teachers, suggesting that professional experience conditions how technological knowledge contributes to perceived competence. Gender gaps were also identified. The findings highlight that strengthening critical thinking awareness is a strategic pathway for enhancing teaching self-efficacy and promoting more thoughtful, ethical, and context-sensitive integration of AI in education, especially in scenarios of accelerated digitalization.