Is it just me, or does the education feed on nearly all social media channels make you feel as if there is nothing more important going on right now than AI? Yes, AI will affect education in a multitude of ways we are struggling to image, yes, it will change the workplace, and yes, it will affect society more broadly, but I’m concerned that with so many educationalists so frequently thinking and writing about it, we are perhaps losing focus on other areas that are more vital and meaningful if our goal is to improve education overall. For sure we need to keep an eye on AI, but perhaps only one.
I often wonder if much of the rhetoric around AI is lost on the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are in classrooms everyday, working directly with young people. Many of those educators will be using AI to help with lesson planning or the creation of resources, viewing it as a helpful way to move beyond the traditional off the peg, ‘Twinkle’ style, worksheets and schemes of work. They might also be having to deal with homework that has been churned out of ChatGPT, rather than the more traditional plagiarism from Google. But beyond that it’s not really changed their day to day experience.
In the various studies and books that I’ve read on education, one thing repeatedly emerges; the teacher is the single biggest factor in students’ academic attainment. A great teacher will go further, caring about the learners’ holistic growth, focussing on the full personal development of their students. A passionate teacher, who enjoys interacting with students and is knowledgeable about their subject will, for the foreseeable future, remain more important than an AI bot. Whilst they might increasingly use bots in their lessons, they will undoubtedly remain the primary determining factor in their students’ success.
Surely, as educationalist, our primary concerns should be things such as how we:
- Encourage passionate, interested, people to enter the profession;
- Use training to provide early career teachers with the essential knowledge and skills required to be effective;
- Provide the space, encouragement, and confidence for developing teachers to experiment, hone, and personalise their teaching approach, transposing their teaching into a form more closely resembling an artistic practice;
- Support teachers as they progress into management so they can effectively lead educational institutions;
- And finally, create an effective culture of sharing, so that experienced educators can utilise their skills, experience and knowledge to develop future generations of teachers.
Why are these, and other similar, related, topics, not making up 80% or more of my feed?
The disjunct between the work of academics studying education and the reality of teachers’ experiences and practices in classrooms has often been noted. I wonder if we are seeing a similar separation here?
I hope that this post will not be misinterpreted as me saying that AI is not important, it is and will be, just, let’s only keep one eye on it!
If you’ve read this far, you might be interested to know that MELD Institute offers a range of services to education institutions. Find out more here, or contact us directly, to see how we can support you.