The Digital Revolution in Education: The Role of AI from the Perspective of Future Teachers

We are currently witnessing rapid technological advancement and modernisation of society, with digital technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), increasingly asserting its dominance. This study focuses on understanding the attitudes and expectations of future teachers towards AI, which has an impact on all areas of society, especially on the education and preparation of future teachers. Through a questionnaire survey, the study seeks to gain a more detailed insight into how future educators perceive AI and their attitudes towards it. The questionnaire, which was specifically designed for this research, focuses on different aspects of perceptions of AI in education. Respondents from both primary and secondary school teacher education programmes expressed their views on the use of AI in the pedagogical process, its impact on teacher-student interaction and indicated possible implications for the future of education. The main objectives of the research were to determine the views of prospective teachers on the use of AI in teaching, to identify positive, negative or neutral attitudes towards the integration of AI into the educational process, to identify the future role of AI in education, to determine how prospective teachers envision the use of AI in the pedagogical environment in the long term, to identify areas where teaching with AI could be most effectively integrated, and to identify areas where AI could be most appropriately used to improve educational outcomes and processes. The data presented through this paper is part of the "Perceptions of AI by current and future teachers" project. The results of this study could provide valuable information for educational institutions, policy makers of educational strategies and frameworks, and AI developers to better understand the needs and expectations of future teachers in the context of the increasing digitalisation of education. Our intention is to fill the knowledge gap on the perception of AI in educational contexts and thus provide important information for the future development of pedagogical strategies and technologies in education.