Abstract
<p>Three decades of large-scale technology investment in schools from one-to-one laptop programmes to interactive whiteboards to, most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has produced a consistent pattern: substantial capital expenditure paired with modest, uneven, or absent instructional change. Prevailing accounts of this pattern locate the explanation in the technology itself its cost, its usability, its alignment with curriculum and prescribe better tools, more training, or clearer policy as the remedy. This paper argues that the explanation lies elsewhere. Synthesizing organizational readiness theory, technology-acceptance research, and the sociotechnical-systems tradition with an emerging body of evidence on AI adoption in K–12 settings, the paper introduces Human Readiness for AI in Education as a conceptual framework in which the decisive variable in AI-implementation outcomes is not the technology adopted but the readiness of the people asked to adopt it. Human readiness is proposed as a multidimensional organizational capacity spanning shared purpose, professional capability, relational trust, collective judgement, and adaptive growth that determines whether a given technology amplifies or degrades educational practice. The paper positions this construct against established adoption theories, states its core propositions and boundary conditions, and specifies the evidence that would validate or falsify it. It closes with a research agenda through which the construct can be tested. Consistent with the norms of theory-building scholarship, this paper offers a conceptual foundation, not a validated instrument or an implementation methodology.Keywords: human readiness; artificial intelligence in education; technology adoption; educational leadership; organisational readiness for change; school transformation</p>