Educ-ai-tion
The following is a critical discussion of a small portion of the report produced by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA); ‘Baker, T., Smith, L., & Anissa, N. (2019). Educ-ai-tion rebooted? Exploring the future of artificial intelligence in schools and colleges.’
In the report, the current situation in schools and colleges in the UK is described as well as an imagined future where more Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in education.
The current condition of schools and teaching as it is described in the report, is stated as a fact, not something that could be explained by current social & political contexts or even a situation that could potentially be remedied by a change in politics and policy. There are many fatalistic statements in the report that support this outlook: “Teacher workload is a growing crisis in the UK. Excessive administration is leaving teachers with less time to do what they are trained to do: devote time and expertise to teaching young people.” (p15) Within this short section, two problems are briefly mentioned but there are possible solutions to both of these without involving technology which are easily identified (although not so easily implemented).
First of all, teacher workload; usually workload grows because there are not enough hands available, so the easiest solution here would be to make sure there are more teachers, rather than adding the complication of AI into the mix. The report contradicts itself with regards to this as well, since it also mentions that:
“Although AIEd is often seen as seeking to replace teachers (and some CEOs of technology
companies are quite open about this aim), our research suggests that this is neither possible (in
the foreseeable future) nor desirable. Instead, as Rose Luckin and colleagues note, ‘‘It is teachers
who will be the orchestrators of when and how to use AIEd tools.”10 (p13)
It is unclear how the crisis that is teachers’ workload can be helped by adding technology if AI in education does not replace teachers. As we have seen during the pandemic, using technology for teaching is not a ‘magical solution’, it takes considerable time and effort from the human teachers initially and then continuously to make sure the learning can still be achieved. The Clinical Educator Programme worked with many clinical teachers at the start of the new academic year, to make sure they had an understanding of Collaborate before teaching their students. There is no magic wand that we can wave that will allow AI to take over the teaching.
The second point refers to “excessive administration” that teachers have to deal with. In this case there are two relatively obvious solutions; to reduce the amount of administration that teachers are required to complete or make sure the work can be done by administrators to free up the teachers for teaching. One of the tasks that is mentioned in the report that could potentially be done by AI is the Class Chart (p13) which allows the teacher to input pupil characteristics to decide on a seating plan. This is an instrumentalist way of looking at the technology in question, because in reality the technology would need to interact and be adapted depending on the type of teacher and the type of students that attend the class. This software also would need to take into account that students change: children more than adults. Young pupils will have changing friendships and interests which a human teacher could take into account, where the software would need to be told; causing extra work for the teacher.
Overall, the report reads more like a sales pitch for using AI than a report on the current and future state of education. There are strong influences of instrumentalism and essentialism throughout where technology is being portrayed as the solution for the insurmountable problems that schools and teaching currently face, with little to no attention to the social context in which schools and education are situated. It is exactly the kind of black – boxing of technology that Hamilton & Friesen warn us about in their article1
- Hamilton, Edward C., and Norm Friesen in their article from 2013: “Online Education: A Science and Technology Studies Perspective.” Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 39 (p 9)
This report does provide a useful example of essentialism, instrumentalism and techno-solutionism. As you say, the administrative burdens are accepted as a given rather than the outcome of a whole system of reporting, auditing and accountabilities generated through policy instruments and a general managerialism. There does seem scope to me, however, for automation and artificial intelligence to address some aspects of the teaching enterprise that aren’t direct teaching- simple chatbots can automatically respond to some student/ pupil questions asked online such as what’s a the deadline for a piece of homework, what is the current homework, automated scheduling of parents evening appointments, etc… automation can be used to prompt spaced-repetition for the consolidation of learning while more advanced AI is being used to generate active learning materials from provided content (such as converting a wikipedia page in to a series of learning activities) or even the assessment of free-text responses. The less dystopian perspective is that automation and AI will release teachers from administrative and low value work (although the report’s example of seating plans seemed a bit bizarre to me) to concentrate more on actual teaching activities – incl teaching, lesson planning, professional development, etc…. Certainly, much of the research suggests that teaching is one of the less susceptible professions to being replaced by AI. But yes, the report is a bit sales pitchy and lacks a real understanding of the art of teaching.
That’s an effective structure for the post and good to see a reference to Hamilton & Freisen too!