Is the Education System Prepared for the Irruption of Artificial Intelligence? A Study on the Perceptions of Students of Primary Education Degree from a Dual Perspective: Current Pupils and Future Teachers

Abstract

The recent irruption of ChatGPT, a powerful chatbot that uses a “Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer” language model, could revolutionize education worldwide since it can greatly affect the competence development that students need to achieve for their professional future. The aim of this work is to assess the level of knowledge of ChatGPT and the perception of its possibilities of use in education by students studying the Primary Education Degree at the University of León (Spain) from a double perspective: as students and future teachers, respectively. For this purpose, a descriptive, cross-sectional, non-experimental, and quantitative research design was carried out, with the design and elaboration of a questionnaire. The questionnaire data were statistically processed by calculating relative frequencies. The main results highlight that students have a positive perception of ChatGPT use, with potential applications in education, and do not perceive it as a threat to the deterioration of the educational system as long as the sources of the data generated by the tool are verified. In addition, as students and future teachers, they need more knowledge about the operation of ChatGPT to ensure its correct use and maintain the quality of the education system. Thus, to overcome ChatGPT irruption in education, digital literacy is crucial at all educational levels.