AI in Schools: Tools to Support, Not Substitute, Great Teaching

While scrolling insta the other night, I came across the story of Derek Li, a Chinese entrepreneur who removed his sons from traditional schools and is experimenting with AI-led education (says a lot about my social media algorithm). These kinds of posts and inquiries make me angry (and fearful of Skynet). I immediately started thinking, “Can algorithms truly replace the human teacher? Can education become more efficient, or even more effective, by replacing teachers with algorithms?”

To be clear, there are many areas where AI can help make education more efficient (and maybe more effective): creating learning progressions based on the standards, lesson planning, scheduling, brainstorming ideas, communications, possibly even tracking student progress (without using student names or other identifying information). But the idea of replacing teachers with AI, indeed anxiety inducing, is misguided and oversimplified. Because, as most educators know, at the foundational level of all effective learning are relationships, connections, emotional and social development, and human judgment… all the things no algorithm can reliably replicate.

What AI Can Improve

When it comes to education, AI can play a strong supporting role in the following areas:

  • Lesson planning & content generation: AI can assist in structuring units, generating ideas, adapting content to different levels.
  • Administrative and scheduling tasks: Freeing teachers from logistical burdens so they can focus more on teaching.
  • Feedback loops and assessment data: AI tools can help identify gaps, track progress, offer drill-practice or adaptive learning. 
  • Curriculum Writing, Alignment, and Improvement: In recent workshops, I’ve seen presenters use AI to identify essential standards, generate learning progressions based on those standards, and then eventually develop guaranteed and viable curricula. 

These are valuable efficiencies. But, more than anything, they are support functions. In no way are they a substitute for what good teachers do or bring to the classroom on a daily basis. 

Why Teachers Matter

Replacing teachers and the human element of school with AI overlooks very important dimensions of good education:

  1. Social-emotional development & relationships
    • Before students can engage deeply with academic material, many other needs must be met (safety, connection, belonging, emotional regulation, etc.). Some call this “Maslow before Bloom,” or “relationships before rigor.”
    • Teachers see more than content delivery. They often recognize when a child is dealing with stress, trauma, anxiety, or other outside-school pressures. These sociocultural factors (family situation, socio-economic status, identity, culture) massively influence brain development and subsequent learning.
  2. Mentorship, modeling, moral/character development
    • Teachers are mentors, role models, means by which students learn not just facts, but how to think, to work with others, to manage failure, to persist.
    • Human presence allows for empathy, adapting to nonverbal signals, trust (features that algorithms will always struggle to replicate).
    • I’ve seen a similar model where the ed tech entrepreneur uses “guides” to help facilitate some of the “connection” within a normal classroom. I have lots of questions about this and would be interested in seeing the data on its effectiveness. 
  3. Collaborative learning, peer interaction, group dynamics
    • Lots of human learning happens in social, group settings. Students learn from one another; discussion, debate, and working in teams foster deeper understanding. If students are spending most of their time interacting with machines/screens, those peer and human interactions may be limited, reducing the benefit of collaborative learning.
    • John Hattie’s meta-analyses show that collaborative and cooperative learning have moderate effect sizes (collaborative learning = .40/cooperative learning = .55). VISIBLE LEARNING+2VISIBLE LEARNING+2
  4. Long-term, holistic outcomes
    • Many qualities we deem necessary for functioning as a citizen in society, including social responsibility, creativity, resilience, and kindness, are nurtured through human relationships, interactions, and shared experiences. Algorithms can’t do that. 
    • Also, there’s still limited evidence on long-term effects of full AI-led schooling: what about emotional well-being, social skills, creativity, ethics, fairness, bias, etc. — all areas where human teachers are crucial both for guidance and oversight.

Risks & Downsides of Too Much Technology and Overreliance on AI

Most parents can probably attest to ways technology has changed their child/children. To that point, new research shows some startling effects technology (and social media) can have on children: 

  • Mental health, attention, screen time, social comparison
    • In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt argues that the rise of smartphones and social media and a lack of play and human interaction with others correlates with increases in anxiety, depression, self-harm among teens, especially since around 2010. He links these changes to what he calls the “phone-based childhood,” which displaces in-person interactions, free play, and unsupervised activity. Wikipedia+2New York University+2
    • Other risks include sleep loss (and its subsequent effects), attention fragmentation, addiction to the stimulus of screens, social comparison, and loneliness. Unplugged Canada+2New York University+2
  • Reduced opportunity for embodied, real-world learning
    • Learning that involves physical presence will always be hard to replicate with AI, including interacting with other students, hands-on work, field projects, and labs.
    • Play, social games, imaginative play, risky play, and collaborative projects are foundational, especially for younger children. 
    • Also, Hattie’s list considers “technology with high school students” to have a smaller effect size than human relational or instructional strategies. VISIBLE LEARNING+1
  • Bias, equity, fairness, cultural context
    • AI systems are designed by people and trained on data; they can and do embed biases. Currently, they’re not very good at picking up cultural or individual differences, or responding sensitively to them.
    • Also, would this reliance on AI/algorithms widen equity gaps because not all students have equal access to technology or robust internet/devices? 
  • Screen fatigue & disengagement
    • Students may be less motivated if too much is mediated by screens. Authentic human feedback, encouragement, peer interaction often drive motivation more than automated systems.

Conclusion

AI is powerful. It’s smart. And there are things it can do to make many parts of education more efficient. But efficiency alone is not enough. If we lose what makes education human, including relationships, empathy, belonging, and social learning, then we risk undermining learning, not enhancing it.

While we find ways to integrate AI into our daily practices, we must always remember that there’s no substitute for great, human, in-person teaching. Because in the end, good education is not just about what students learn, but also about who they become. Teachers, not algorithms, are the way we get there. 

Kids Don’t Need Facts. They Can Google That Stuff Later…

 

It was the year 2008. I got my first “smartphone” (a Samsung). I couldn’t believe I (and everyone else with a smartphone for that matter) had the internet (and social media) at my fingertips! What a momentous occasion! Around the same time, I also started substitute teaching. In 2007, I graduated from ISU with a degree in Communication. I didn’t like where I was working or what I was doing (a marketing job in the city). So, I started subbing to make extra money and ended up LOVING it. 

When I got my own classroom, technology and phones were even smarter (and more affordable)! My students started getting their own smartphones (most of the time, their phones were better and smarter than mine!). Educators began contemplating how to incorporate smartphones into the classroom/learning. In addition to the 1-1 initiatives some districts were implementing, educators embraced a more financially friendly trend: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). If districts/schools allowed it, students used their own devices for learning and research purposes while in class.

This trend was the impetus for a new and popular idea for learning: “Kids don’t need to know facts/dates/names/etc. They can just google that stuff later.” For many educators, this idea just made sense. Some saw this as a way to maximize learning efficiency in their classrooms, “We don’t have to spend time on fluffy facts. We can focus on teaching skills. Then, kids can apply those skills in all content areas across the board.” However, this idea was NOT backed by research. But, like other popular education theories not backed by evidence or research, it felt good. It felt freeing. It felt logical. It felt like educators could leave out fluffy facts and focus on skills.   

Today, during my morning commute, I listened to a podcast on Natalie Wexler’s book, Beyond the Science of Reading. During the episode, Wexler obviously talked about the science of reading. But, she also talked about the science of learning and how writing connects to both the science of reading and the science of learning. She also talked about some common misconceptions regarding learning and what the evidence really says (I’ve added some for emphasis):

  • Kids don’t need facts because they have Google: Actually, kids desperately need facts and knowledge. The more factual information and prior knowledge students have stored in long-term memory, the more efficiently and effectively they can learn new things. 
  • Kids just need skills: Actually, 1.) skills aren’t always as easily transferable from one domain to another  2.) skills like critical thinking depend heavily on a person’s prior knowledge in a subject. Both ED Hirsch and Natalie Wexler talk about how critical thinking cannot be taught effectively without first ensuring that students possess sufficient background knowledge. 
  • Writing in for reading and for learning: When it comes to reading, I always say, “If students are reading about it, they should be writing about it.” When it comes to learning and cognition, when we write, we are actively retrieving information we have stored in long-term memory and then putting it into our own words. Super powerful stuff! 
  • Equity: Most educators know that students from disadvantaged backgrounds come to us with far less experiences and knowledge than their peers in wealthier settings. In fact, research suggests that students from low-income families hear approximately 4 to 30 million fewer words than their peers from higher-income families. Same applies to facts and other knowledge. Leveling the playing field requires that families and schools create environments that promote meaningful conversations and language interactions with young children. 
  • Technology in learning: Technology is a POWERFUL tool (AI is evolving and changing the way we do things every single day. I used AI to generate the image for this blog). Students should use technology in school. But, as educators, we have to help them use it the right way. Students MUST engage in the arduous writing process in order to reap the learning benefits associated with writing. 

Any other common learning misconceptions come to mind? Let me now! 

Developmentally Appropriate: Is This Phrase Hurting American Education?

Have you ever heard the phrase “developmentally appropriate” or its inverse, “developmentally inappropriate?” In the world of education, there are lots of phrases and acronyms that non-educators don’t understand (even people within the field don’t understand them all). In my experience, “Developmentally Appropriate” and its inverse are most often used to rationalize NOT teaching or exposing a student to certain content or skills. Most of the time, I hear it uttered with such authority that it shuts down an entire conversation. But, every time I hear it, I have some serious questions regarding its credibility/use:

  • Why do you think this skill or content is developmentally inappropriate?
  • How do you know this particular skill or content isn’t developmentally appropriate? Did you study it?
  • What scholarly and peer-reviewed evidence do you have to show it’s not developmentally appropriate?
  • Who told you this particular skill or content isn’t developmentally appropriate?

It goes on and on. As it turns out, I’m not the only one with these questions. I’m currently reading E.D. Hirsch’s 2020 book, How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation. In it, Hirsch goes beyond simply wondering and posits, “That phrase, developmentally appropriate practice, pronounced authoritatively, has been a dangerous hindrance to American excellence in education.” Hirsch went on to say that many use the phrase “developmentally inappropriate” to refer to anything seemingly difficult or arduous for a child. He linked its use to the science of reading and how explicit phonics instruction was once deemed “developmentally inappropriate” and “boring.” However, as modern reading research shows, regardless of how seemingly arduous something like explicit phonics instruction may be, it’s essential for developing good readers. Reading this affirmed my wonderings. Hirsch later explained the origins of the phrase “developmentally appropriate” and why we ALL should wonder about its use.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980), a Swiss psychologist known for his work in cognitive development, theorized that children’s thinking evolves through four distinct stages, each stage coinciding with a child’s biological maturation: sensorimotor (birth to age 2), preoperational (age 2 to 7), concrete operational (age 7 to 11), and formal operational (11 years and up). According to Piaget, as children interact with their environments, they go through these very specific and age-related stages of development. Piaget’s work influenced major educational movements and reforms, such as “child-centered learning,” “constructivism,” and “developmentally appropriate instruction.”

Fortunately, as cognitive science evolves and technology used to explore and map the brain advances, a plethora of Piaget’s methods and findings have been refuted. For example, Piaget drew many of his conclusions from an extraordinarily limited sample size, which often included his own children. This raises questions about the generalizability of his findings. What’s more, new evidence suggests that Piaget overemphasized distinct, sequential stages of cognitive development. Brain research shows that cognitive development is actually more fluid and continuous, and children exhibit abilities from multiple stages simultaneously. Finally, Piaget’s findings emphasized universal stages of development that were largely independent of social and cultural factors. However, contemporary research (and what most educators probably already know) suggests that cognitive development is significantly influenced by social interactions and cultural practices.

This raises an important question: If much of Piaget’s work has been challenged or refuted, why do some still use the phrase “developmentally appropriate” as a justification for limiting what students are exposed to? I prefer to think that students are far more capable than we assume, especially when given the right supports. When we default to labeling something as “developmentally inappropriate,” we may unintentionally place limits on learning and restrict access to rich, meaningful content that could help students grow beyond our expectations.

This reminds me of a powerful moment from the classic film Field of Dreams, when the mysterious voice whispers, “If you build it, they will come.” Despite uncertainty, Costner’s character takes a leap of faith, believing that if he creates the right conditions, something remarkable will happen. I believe the same applies to education: “If you teach it, they will learn.” When we raise our expectations and provide rigorous, engaging instruction, students will rise to the challenge. But first, we must believe in their potential and reject limiting assumptions about what they can’t do.

One instructional approach that embraces this philosophy is called “teaching up”, a strategy championed by Carol Ann Tomlinson. Teaching up challenges the idea of differentiating instruction down to meet perceived limitations. Instead, it advocates for designing rich, high-level learning experiences and then scaffolding appropriately so that all students—regardless of background, ability, or previous knowledge—have access to complex, meaningful content. By maintaining high expectations and adjusting supports as needed, teaching up ensures that students are stretched intellectually, rather than being held back by arbitrary notions of readiness.

Obviously, we’re not teaching AP statistics or multivariable calculus to Kindergarteners. Clearly, there’s good reason we don’t teach advanced level math to 6 year olds. But, we do need to be cautious about how we use the phrase “developmentally appropriate” (and its inverse). Rather than using it as a barrier to justify why students can’t engage with certain content or skills, we should approach it as a framework for how we support students in accessing rigorous learning opportunities. If we build high-quality instruction with the right scaffolds, students will not only come—they will thrive.

Tying Teacher Evaluation to Student Test Scores: The Ongoing Debate

Interestingly, fewer states are including student test scores in their teacher evaluation calculations. As of October 2019, 34 states will use student test scores while calculating teacher effectiveness, compared to 43 states in 2015 (read more here).

In addition to reading the aforementioned article, I recently engaged in a conversation with an advocate of using student test scores to calculate teacher effectiveness. I’m always amused when people say that educators need to be held accountable in similar ways to other professions (ie. The business world). These advocates want some means of measuring teacher effectiveness (as do we all), and equate students to “products” that are churned out at the end of the year. Obviously, we know that human beings are not “products” churned out on a factory belt. But, I’m always perplexed by these proponents. What I find most perplexing is that, the grand majority of the time, people touting/proposing/enacting these kinds of proposals:

    Are not teachers
    Have never been teachers
    Have no experience in PUBLIC education
    Have NO certification in education
    Run some kind of educational “philanthropy”
    See improving education as their “crusade”

I’m no statistician, but neither are many advocates for these types of reforms. I don’t understand how any teacher evaluation system could accurately account for all the variables that vastly impact student achievement (over which educators have MINIMAL TO ZERO control), including but not limited to (just to name a few of the big ones):

  • Poverty
  • Hunger
  • Homelessness
  • Family Mobility
  • Single-Parent Households
  • Parents’ Academic History/Ability
  • Diet
  • Physical Activity/Physical Health
  • Mental Health

I’ve heard that professors at prestigious universities have been trying to quantify and control for these almost uncontrollable variables since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983 (with minimal to no success). I’ve read about researchers developing ridiculous formulas to try and control for outside-of-school factors and then incorporating these formulas into teacher evaluation along with student performance. In terms of actually improving student achievement by tying student achievement to teacher evaluation, the data are inconclusive. Of course, I contend that the reason for this is that these types of evaluation systems do nothing to address the underlying symptoms of student academic performance, or lack there of. “Efforts to improve educational outcomes in schools, attempting to drive change through test-based accountability, are unlikely to succeed unless accompanied by policies to address the out-of-school factors that negatively affect large numbers of our nations’ students” (Berliner, 2015).

Don’t misunderstand me….

• Students should ALWAYS be showing growth

• Teacher evaluation should encompass some type of measurable/quantified measure

I’m NOT saying that because of the issues mentioned above, we should not hold educators accountable. I’m NOT saying that we as educators can’t do things in order to ameliorate some of these underlying issues. THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M SAYING AT ALL. In fact, much research exists that posits, yes, these out-of-school factors exist, but here are things we can do in our classrooms to help. I am saying that teacher evaluation systems that include student performance as a measure of teacher effectiveness will always be seriously flawed.

I’m interested to see how this trend continues. Clearly, the government plays a major role in these types of educational reform initiatives. Thus, I would say that, unfortunately, future evaluation changes will be the result of a continuously changing and volatile political climate.

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Empathy: We Need It Now More Than Ever

While listening to talk radio over the weekend, I heard an analyst posit that there has been an increase in violent shooter massacres across the world. As a rebuttal to the analyst’s statement, someone called in and asserted that there’s been no increase in these types of situations, just an increase in their media coverage, and that we’re more aware of these situations now because of social media and the 24-hour news coverage cycle.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there actually has been an increase in these types of events. That being said, no one seems to agree on the root cause of these issues. Researchers, analysts, talking heads, and armchair experts have blamed these massacres on everything, including video games, popular movies and music, traumatic home lives, healthy diet imbalances, mental health issues (which may result from Adverse Childhood Experiences/trauma), etc.

Through my preliminary research, I’ve noted that it’s very difficult to isolate one variable as the root cause of these situations. Granted, in many cases, the perpetrators seem to come from broken homes where they may have experienced some sort of trauma that may have resulted in mental health issues. In no way am I downplaying that explanation. In fact, I agree that trauma and mental health issues probably contribute to the majority of these situations. However, I hypothesize that there’s another issue at play.

In my career as an educator, I’ve noticed something very troubling.   Many students (not all) have serious difficulty understanding someone else’s emotions, coupled with the inability to sense and understand how someone else is thinking or feeling. This is usually referred to as empathy. In my day-to-day experiences with students from a variety of grade levels, I’ve seen that many students don’t grasp the concept. Many students lack the ability to predict/foresee how their actions impact others or how their actions are perceived by others. Often times, they can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They don’t conceptualize that, “Hmm. I wouldn’t like it if someone did this to me, so I probably shouldn’t do it to them.” I don’t know why students seem to lack empathy. What’s happening now that’s causing this major paucity of empathy? I can’t put my finger on it, yet.

Regardless, I try to employ certain practices/strategies/approaches that will help teach/display empathy. For instance, while dealing with behavior issues, I always employ Restorative Practices. For years, Restorative Practices have been touted/advertised as a way to decrease the school-to-prison pipeline, and subsequently decrease crime and other issues. Restorative Practices emphasize how our actions can harm our relationships with others and our community. While using these practices with students, we focus on our actions, the consequences, and how members of our school community feel as a result of our actions. Not only do we focus on the way our actions harm relationships, we brainstorm and implement solutions that help repair said harm.

What other ways can we inculcate our students with empathic dispositions? I know some schools have social-emotional curricula. But, I’m just looking for ways throughout my everyday interactions with students where I can help teach and model empathy.

The STEM Challenge Conundrum: Learning and Making Meaning Through Interactive STEM Challenges

DISCLAIMER: I LOVE STEM! I was a cofounder of a STEM school. I spent summers developing integrated project-based learning (PBL) curricula for the school. I procured computer coding and Project Lead the Way engineering curricula for those students. My doctoral dissertation focused on STEM (specifically, challenges facing upper level female undergraduate engineering students). I LOVE STEM!

All that said, I can’t help but be somewhat critical of the “STEM Challenge” craze currently gripping schools throughout the nation. I’ve observed this craze all over Pinterest, Teachers-Pay-Teachers, and at teacher stores like Lakeshore Learning. Again, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure STEM challenges garner high levels of student engagement. It seems STEM challenges also really pique student interest. Yet, that’s not what concerns me regarding STEM challenges. I’m focused on the actual learning that occurs while students engage in STEM challenges (currently, I can’t find any research on this. Maybe it’s still too new).

I once participated in a STEM challenge a teacher was conducting with her students in her classroom. She distributed the directions, gave the students a bunch of supplies, and then told them to accomplish the task clearly delineated in the directions. Like I said, as I watched and participated, there was no denying the high levels of engagement and interest. Later that year, I was presenting at the International STEM Education Association Conference in Branson, Missouri, and I sat in on another STEM challenge presentation. This teacher did THE SAME EXACT THING. Obviously, two teachers (out of the millions who probably conduct STEM challenges with their students) who conduct STEM challenges the same exact way is NOT generalizable. However, that got me thinking… What learning (if any) is actually occurring during these STEM challenges?

Applying what I know of cognitive psychology and cognitive load theory (which, admittedly isn’t a lot), I’m attempting to better understand and articulate how students learn (or don’t learn) during STEM challenges. First, let’s briefly discuss a basic premise of cognitive psychology. Knowledge is stored in long-term memory (LTM) and new information is processed in short-term memory (STM). When considering learning and problem solving, for people who have the necessary information stored in LTM, it’s easier for them to bring that information into STM and manipulate it to make sense of newly received information.

Cognitive load theory suggests that our working memory capacity has inherent limits. Many cognitive researchers posit that our STM can only hold seven plus or minus two units of information at a time (some people can hold and manipulate up to nine units of information while others can only hold and manipulate up to five units of information in STM). When excessive cognitive load exists, it creates error or some kind of interference. So, for people who don’t have the necessary information stored in LTM, asking them to manipulate a variety of supplies and simultaneously learn new content and concepts may be excessive cognitive load (i.e. STEM challenges).

This may then suggest that students, depending on the capacity of their STM and how much knowledge they have stored in LTM, would only have space to possibly manipulate some of the supplies, rather than also learn the new content and concepts associated with a STEM challenge.

I always refer to this in my integrated PBL presentations and when talking about other constructivist approaches to learning as well. If students don’t have the necessary information already stored in LTM, and they’re being provided with too many units of information during a STEM challenge (being given a variety of supplies, being asked to learn new content, and being asked to understand new concepts), they may be experiencing cognitive load which could be hampering their learning.

I’ve heard from some teachers that they like to engage in a KWL or anticipatory set in order to gauge prior knowledge before starting a STEM challenge. I think this is definitely a good way to start a STEM challenge. However, I’m very interested in empirical research about learning using STEM challenges. Know any? Please share!

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Does Over-Assessing Students Perpetuate the “Is This for a Grade?” Mentality?

DISCLAIMER: I am in NO WAY saying assessment is bad. I don’t mean to place value judgment on any type of assessment with this blog post.

I don’t think it’s any secret. We assess students a lot in schools these days. In addition to the daily formative assessments that teachers utilize in their classrooms, students still take summative assessments/exams, interim assessments (MAP, Discovery Ed., etc.), and state-standardized tests (I may even be missing some).

Of course, I don’t think anyone would argue that certain types of assessments are very important. I posit that the majority of teacher-created assessments designed to assess a student’s level/progress with the intention of providing feedback immediately (or closely) following the assessment are far better than state standardized tests (of course) and a good portion of the interim assessments currently available. Obviously, this brings up the debate about the quality of teacher-designed assessments and how teachers actually use the data generated from the assessments they administer. I don’t really want to debate that. For the sake of this blog post, let’s just assume that teachers administer quality formative assessments and know how to truly utilize the assessment data to provide relevant and timely feedback.

While researching the validity and effectiveness of grades and homework, many researchers state that grades themselves turn students into “number/letter/grade monsters” or condition them to severely over-embrace the “is this for a grade?” mentality. Students often simply pursue a grade, rather than pursue learning for learning’s sake. In fact, researchers have found that grades diminish intrinsic motivation to learn anything. Obviously, this type of mentality, perpetuated by grading habits and traditions, is counterintuitive to actual learning. In addition to grades, I wonder if over-assessing students also contributes to that “is this for a grade?” mentality?

I’ve been cogitating about how all the assessments may add to the perpetuation of “is this for a grade?” mindset. I’d venture to say that the teacher-created assessments that informally gauge a student’s progress (or lack thereof) and that are often seamlessly embedded into classroom instruction do less to perpetuate the “is this for a grade?” mentality than interim assessments or yearly state-standardized tests. If the teacher-created formative assessments are seamlessly embedded into classroom instruction, I bet students don’t even think about a grade (some students may not even know they’re being assessed). However, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard students ask “is this for a grade?” when taking interim assessments or state-standardized tests.

So, when formative assessment becomes such a part of the classroom environment that students don’t even know it’s occurring, grades become less of a focus. Suppose we were to do away with interim assessments and state-standardized tests. Suppose we only focus on teacher-created formative assessments and the resulting feedback. Suppose we got rid of grades and replaced them with a standards-based grading system (many districts are moving in that direction as we speak). It’s strange to think about an education system that would look like that. But, I’d venture to say that this type of system would probably eliminate the “is this for a grade?” mentality and possibly increase intrinsic motivation to learn for learning’s sake.

I’m sure there’s research on this. If you know of a study, please share it! I’d love to read it!

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