Preservice Teachers' Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence: A Scale Development Study

The purpose of this study is to develop a scale to assess pre-service teachers' attitudes toward artificial intelligence. This quantitative study was conducted with 278 pre-service teachers enrolled in faculties of education, who were selected through convenience sampling. The data were analyzed through content validity, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), reliability evaluation, and item-total correlations. The EFA results identified a three-factor structure as cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitude that accounted for 53.40% of the variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.887, and the factor loadings ranged from 0.487 to 0.913. The affective dimension showed relatively lower validity compared to the other dimensions, suggesting that emotional expressions were less pronounced than cognitive and behavioral attitudes. In conclusion, the developed scale is a valid and reliable tool for assessing pre-service teachers' views on artificial intelligence. Future studies may explore its relationship with various socio-demographic variables and strengthen the affective dimension with qualitative data. This research underscores the importance of understanding pre-service teachers’ and teachers’ attitudes for the successful integration of AI technologies in education.