A Study of Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions of the Use of ChatGPT in Practical Gardening Training

Abstract

Background and objective: The purpose of this study is to determine the empirical tendency of pre-service teachers to use ChatGPT for practical gardening training and the impact of using ChatGPT characteristics on problem solving ability, and to draw implications. For the study, we investigated the general trend of horticultural practice (practical gardening classes), the trend of horticultural practice using ChatGPT, and the problem-solving ability after practical gardening training.Methods: In this study, problem solving skills were categorized into knowledge, skills and attitudes and correlated with ChatGPT, and the effects of ChatGPT characteristics on immediacy, continuity of questions, adjustability of the level of responses, suitability of media to the current generation, advantages of the lack of necessity to ask directly, advantages of conversational knowledge, expertise, applicability of educational utilization, and diversity of range of questions were analyzed.Results: The results showed that pre-service teachers found ChatGPT to be very useful in teaching horticultural practice, with a high preference for customized lessons and discovery of different teaching materials. In particular, we examined the problem solving skills of the pre-service teachers in horticultural practice and found that they had difficulties when problems arose. We therefore organized them into knowledge, skills and attitudes to examine the correlation with ChatGPT characteristics. As a result, knowledge and skills in practical gardening training were positively correlated with ChatGPT characteristics, while attitudes and ChatGPT characteristics were negatively correlated in immediacy, continuity of questions, adjustability of the level of responses, and suitability of medium, and the others showed a relatively low correlation. The effects of knowledge, skills and attitudes on the use of ChatGPT by pre-service teachers' problem solving skills in practical gardening training were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The knowledge aspect of immediacy and continuity of questions had a significant effect. It can be seen that ChatGPT characteristics such as 'immediacy' and 'continuity of questions' had the greatest impact on the knowledge aspect of problem solving ability. Attitude aspect had a smaller effect. 'suitability of media to the current generation' had a significant effect on attitude, whereas 'expertise' had no significant effect. Applicability of educational utilization and diversity of range of questions had a significant effect on both knowledge and skills.Conclusion: Based on the findings in this study, we explored the possibility of using ChatGPT to educate pre-service teachers about horticultural practice and suggested implications for future related research.