ChatGPT in foreign language education - friend or foe? A quantitative study on pre-service teachers’ beliefs

Abstract

Artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prominent in digital language teaching and learning and it will gain even more significance in the future of EFL education (cf. Schmidt & Strasser 2022). Therefore, it is key to explore how those who will shape this future perceive the newest development: pre-service EFL teachers. As Zheng puts it: “EFL pre-service teacher beliefs are the focus of change in the process of education” (2009), consequently their perceptions and beliefs regarding this evolving area of teaching and learning are of utmost importance. Focussing on the latest developments in ChatGPT, this paper aims to give a first insight into the potential and limitations of this AI platform from the perspectives of pre-service teachers in Germany. Therefore, this research project explores the following research questions: o RQ1: Do student teachers consider ChatGPT relevant for their future teaching practice? o RQ2: In which areas of language education do they see potential changes due to ChatGPT? In what ways? o RQ3: Are there any differences in the perception of ChatGPT between tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy student teachers? The research instrument is a combination of the "technology commitment" scale (Neyer et al. 2016) and items developed specifically for this research project. For RQ3, the analysis refers to existing preliminary work that was able to establish a relationship between technology commitment and the probability of technology application (cf. Knetzek & Christensen 2016). Based on the results of the survey, this paper then aims to offer new perspectives for EFL teacher education and outline concrete reflection activities that further pre-service teachers’ critical engagement with AI in language education.