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Abstract

Background/Introduction/Purpose: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has entered classrooms more quickly than the evidence base needed to guide its use, and that evidence base remains concentrated in higher education. Comparatively little is known about secondary school business education, a curricular area that brings together accounting, business studies, economics, financial literacy, marketing, and retail, and in which teachers move between subjects whose epistemological and procedural demands differ considerably. Existing studies also tend to treat business education as a single homogeneous domain, or to examine one of its subjects in isolation. This study addresses that gap by examining how secondary school business education teachers appraise the pedagogical value, the risks, and the subject-specific limits of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT. The study focuses on teachers’ professional judgement rather than student outcomes, since teachers mediate the introduction, adaptation, or refusal of such tools in actual classrooms.

Methods/Design: The study adopts an exploratory qualitative design. Eighteen teachers of students aged 13 to 18, purposively recruited and spanning less than one year to more than twenty-one years of teaching experience, took part in a structured in-person workshop held in February 2024. The workshop comprised an introductory input session, a hands-on phase in which participants prompted ChatGPT with examination questions and teaching resources drawn from their own subjects, and facilitated group discussions documented on a shared Padlet. Data comprised the Padlet outputs, an anonymous thirteen-item exit questionnaire, and field notes. Analysis followed reflexive thematic analysis, proceeding inductively while sensitised by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework.

Results/Findings: Four themes were generated. Teachers valued GenAI for pedagogical enhancement and efficiency, particularly in lesson preparation, differentiation, and generating examples. They raised substantial concerns about academic integrity, the erosion of independent thinking, and unequal access to the technology. They also identified pronounced subject-specific differences: GenAI was seen as effective for theoretical explanation in accounting but weak in computation, formatting, and the application of accounting standards; and, in economics, as offering global rather than locally relevant examples, no current data, and unreliable graphs. Across all themes, teachers identified professional development and systemic support as preconditions for responsible use.

Conclusions/Discussion/Implications: The pedagogical value of GenAI is not uniform across business education but tracks the epistemological and procedural demands of each subject, indicating that its integration is not pedagogically neutral. The findings carry implications for teacher professional development, assessment design, including Assessment as Learning, and school-level policy on the responsible use of AI. Further research can examine longer-term effects on learning and directly compare subjects and educational levels.

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