Pre-service teachers' perceptions and intentions regarding the use of chatbots through statistical and lag sequential analysis

Chatbots provide unique interactions with compatible learning system features, improving the limitations of current learning systems. Educational chatbots are seen as the future of technology integration in the field of education. The success and usefulness of chatbots in the educational setting are highly dependent on teachers' beliefs regarding their efficacy, yet most research focuses on the effects on students' learning. Only a few studies have investigated teachers’ beliefs regarding the use of chatbots, which is considered an important issue. Owning to teachers' beliefs having been transformed from their pre-service teacher training, this study used quantitative (i.e., questionnaires), qualitative (i.e., interview), and evidence-based (i.e., behavioral analysis) methods to investigate pre-service teachers' learning perceptions and intentions about using chatbots for learning during their training phases. The results of this study revealed that learning perceptions did not reflect pre-service teachers' propensity to use chatbots, but the behavioral analysis uncovered some specific intentions for using chatbots. We further discuss these findings to provide recommendations for the future development of chatbots use in education.