The Role of AI in Shaping Future Educators: Ethics, Instructional Design, and Lifelong Learning

Abstract

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into higher education is reshaping how future educators are prepared for multilingual, multicultural, and ethically complex environments. This study employed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design to investigate how educators and students in Luxembourg and Ukraine perceive and adopt AI in teacher preparation. In Luxembourg, AI was largely framed as a tool to extend inclusive, multilingual practices and institutional innovation, whereas in Ukraine, it was often adopted out of necessity under conditions of crisis and infrastructural disruption. Quantitative analyses demonstrated that perceived benefits of AI were positively correlated with readiness for instructional integration (r = 0.61, p < .001), while ethical concerns were negatively correlated with willingness to adopt AI (r = –0.45, p < .001). No significant group differences were observed in overall reported levels of ethical concern (t(140) = 1.25, p = .21), though qualitative findings revealed striking contrasts in the nature of these concerns. Luxembourgish participants expressed preventative concerns about quality and pedagogy, while Ukrainian participants described immediate ethical dilemmas shaped by wartime conditions, including studying in bomb shelters and balancing personal safety with academic integrity. Findings highlight that while AI can enhance instructional innovation, it simultaneously amplifies inequalities through language bias and access gaps. The study contributes by linking empirical insights to instructional design frameworks (ADDIE, TPACK) and multicultural education theory, offering concrete guidance for teacher preparation in both stable and crisis-affected contexts.

Received: 5 August 2025 | Revised: 9 October 2025 | Accepted: 5 November 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support this work are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Author Contribution Statement

Oksana Chaika: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration. Serhii Kubitskyi: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation. Natalia Berezovska-Savchuk: Validation, Investigation, Data curation.