Preparing for the AI Era: AI-TPACK Levels of Pre-service English Teachers and Their Attitudes toward AI
Abstract
Background. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in educational processes, teacher education programs must prepare future teachers to meaningfully integrate AI tools into their pedagogical practice. Despite this growing need, little is known about pre-service English teachers’ AI related pedagogical competencies, or how their attitudes toward AI align with these competencies. Addressing this gap is essential for informing curriculum design and professional development. This study contributes to the emerging fields of AI integration in language teacher education. It offers timely insights into how future English language teaching (ELT) professionals perceive and use AI, an area with limited empirical evidence.
Purpose. To investigate the artificial intelligence technological pedagogical content knowledge (AI-TPACK) levels of pre-service English teachers and their attitudes toward AI and to examine whether these two constructs are meaningfully related.
Method. 244 pre-service teachers in their junior or senior year from two state universities participated in this study. The participants completed two assessment scales: the AI-TPACK and the GenAI attitude scale. The obtained data were analysed via SPSS, and additional analysis was performed in the R environment.
Results. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers in the ELT department reported relatively positive perceptions across AI-TPACK dimensions and demonstrated positive attitudes toward AI as measured by a learner-oriented GenAI attitude scale. Item-level mean scores across AI-TPACK dimensions ranged from 3.61 to 3.88, indicating relatively similar perceptions across the subdimensions. Notably, no significant relationship was identified between any of the constructs of AI-TPACK and attitudes.
Conclusion. Although pre-service English teachers demonstrated positive attitudes towards AI as a learner and relatively positive perceptions of AI-related pedagogical competence, the absence of significant relationships between these two constructs may point to a possible attitude-competence gap in AI integration. These findings suggest that favourable perceptions of AI alone may not be sufficient for the development of integrated pedagogical competence. Therefore, teacher education programs may need to provide more structured and practice-oriented opportunities for AI integration in ELT contexts.
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References
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