General Attitudes of Prospective Science and Mathematics Teachers towards Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence, which we encounter in every field of life, increases its importance day by day. Mankind has started to rapidly spread this technology, which has just emerged, to all areas of life. Artificial intelligence has managed to have a say in every field from the health sector to education. Attitudes towards artificial intelligence have also started to gain importance in different professions. One of the professions affected by this situation is undoubtedly the teaching profession. Increasing levels of concern and changing attitudes towards artificial intelligence have become important in order to adapt to potential technologies to be used in the education and training process. This study aims to examine the attitudes of pre-service science and mathematics teachers towards artificial intelligence according to the factors of gender, department and graduated high school. For this purpose, the general attitude scale towards artificial intelligence was applied to pre-service teachers and then the data were analysed by independent t-test and Anova test. The data obtained show that the gender of the preservice teachers and the type of high school they graduated from do not have a significant effect on the general attitude towards artificial intelligence. However, a significant difference was observed between pre-service science teachers' general attitudes towards artificial intelligence and pre-service mathematics teachers' general attitudes towards artificial intelligence. Within the scope of the results of this study, it may be useful to develop teaching programmes focusing on artificial intelligence for pre-service teachers in the long term and to increase the technological equipment in the classrooms where they study.