Abstract:

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence into higher education has intensified calls for 'AI literacy' among educators. However, much of the emerging discourse frames AI literacy primarily as a set of technical skills, tool competencies, or compliance-oriented guidelines, overlooking its deeper pedagogical and epistemic implications. This paper argues that such approaches are insufficient for addressing the structural transformations introduced by generative AI in teaching and learning. Rather than merely augmenting instructional practice, GenAI reconfigures where cognitive work occurs, how knowledge is produced, and what constitutes evidence of learning. Under these conditions, educator AI literacy must extend beyond functional proficiency toward pedagogical responsibility and epistemic stewardship. Drawing on learning sciences, assessment theory, and AI-in-education scholarship, this conceptual paper reconceptualises educator AI literacy as the capacity to design, scaffold, and govern learning environments in which generative technologies are used without undermining cognitive engagement. It contends that educators play a central role in mediating learners’ transition from cognitively productive uses of AI to practices that risk disengagement, illusion of competence, and erosion of disciplinary understanding. The paper identifies limitations in prevailing AI literacy frameworks that emphasise awareness, ethics, or tool use, and proposes an alternative orientation that foregrounds cognitive explicitness, metacognitive scaffolding, and pedagogical intentionality. The paper advances a principled framework for educator AI literacy that positions teachers not as passive adopters of technology but as active designers of AI-mediated learning ecologies. By reframing AI literacy as a pedagogical rather than technical competence, this work contributes a conceptual foundation for professional development, curriculum design, and institutional policy in the age of generative AI. It argues that the central challenge is no longer whether generative AI should be used in education, but whether educators are equipped to shape its use in ways that preserve cognitive engagement, learning integrity, and long-term educational value.

Keywords:

Educator AI literacy, Generative artificial intelligence in education, Pedagogical responsibility.