The role of chatbots as resources in mathematical task design for pre-service teachers

We investigate the use of a popular chatbot interface as a resource for designing mathematical problem solving activities by 57 pre-service mathematics teachers enrolled in two quasi-parallel teaching qualification courses in Italy. Employing the Meta-Didactical Transposition framework, we study the participants’ initial praxeologies concerning the chatbots which we partially compare with those related to more traditional resources such as textbooks. Our findings show varied levels of engagement in interacting with the chatbot, highlighting tendencies toward reliance on chatbot outputs with limited critical re-elaboration. In doing this, we also discuss the difficulties and opportunities of the employment of chatbots as a task design resource also with reference to some of their key features such as their opacity and the dynamicity of their underlying technology.