Exploring Greek Upper Primary School Students’ Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence: A Qualitative Study Across Cognitive, Emotional, Behavioral, and Ethical Dimensions

This study investigates the perceptions of Greek sixth-grade students regarding Artifi-cial Intelligence (AI) to inform the design of age-appropriate AI literacy education. Understanding students’ pre-instructional conceptions is essential for developing tar-geted interventions that build on existing knowledge rather than assuming conceptual deficits. A qualitative descriptive design was employed with 229 students from seven elementary schools in Athens, Greece. Data were collected through open-ended ques-tions and word association tasks, then analyzed using Walan’s [1] four-dimensional framework—cognitive, affective, behavioral, and ethical—via a systematic two-phase process supported by Microsoft Excel software. Findings revealed that students hold rich and multifaceted conceptions of AI. Cognitively, they described AI as robots, computational systems, software tools, and autonomous learning programs, frequently referencing ChatGPT and Siri. Affectively, they expressed ambivalence, balancing ap-preciation of AI’s usefulness with concerns over potential risks. Behaviorally, they identified interactive question–answer functions, creative applications, and everyday assistance roles. Ethically, students spontaneously raised issues of responsible use, so-cietal implications, and human–AI relationships. By applying Walan’s framework in the Greek context, this study extends international research, highlighting context-specific themes such as brand awareness and early ethical reasoning. The results challenge as-sumptions of technological naïveté among primary students and offer empirical in-sights for designing culturally responsive, ethically informed AI literacy curricula.