Teachers look to make AI more of an asset

Teachers are increasingly trying to turn artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to their advantage in the face of concerns over cheating and equity.  

A survey released this month from Imagine Learning found 50 percent of educators reported an increased use of AI in the last academic year, and, just days later, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) released new AI guidelines ahead of the 2024-2025 one.  

Experts say teachers have so far mostly used AI to help complete lesson plans quicker or create individualized instruction more efficiently, and that more training is needed to ensure the technology is used to its fullest potential. 

“I think it's still not every teacher who's using AI, but the trend seems to be increasing that more teachers are interested in using these tools both for their own practice and for supporting student learning and engagement,” said Torrey Trust, an associate professor of teacher education and curriculum studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

“From the research that I've seen, the most common usage by teachers is to save them time, so to help with lesson planning, to generate texts for communications with administrative tasks and then to support student learning,” Trust said. “Then also just with creative thinking, support and helping with improving their academic success.”  

In the Imagine Learning report, 68 percent of teachers said they use AI for analyzing student data, 67 percent create instructional material with it and 65 percent use it for grading.  

“I think teachers are getting a little more comfortable with the technology and what it can do,” said Sari Factor, Imagine Learning's chief strategy officer.

While 55 percent of educators think generative AI will have a positive impact on the classroom and 84 percent say training sessions on AI are valuable, only 28 percent in the survey say they have the necessary resources to properly implement AI in their teaching.  

“I really, really, really want the schools and leaders to take time to have conversations about how AI has already been used in our schools. That is probably the most foundational piece of any training that I'm seeing,” said Jody Britten, head of innovation and research at Team4Tech, adding that educators have already been using Grammarly and other resources that are powered by AI without even thinking about it.

“I think starting with that foundational element of all the ways that they're already using AI and then getting into the conversation of how they could use it — we're seeing a lot more educator buy-in that way, because it takes some of the fear and some of the anxiety out of the picture because they're realizing how they've already used all these tools for so long and they just never called it AI,” Britten said.  

The AFT is specifically investing $200,000 in 11 school districts for solutions to understanding and working with AI, an announcement that came as the union released guidelines for educators to follow when working with AI in the classrooms. The guidelines have six key tenets: ensuring student safety and data privacy, centering human interaction, empowering educators to decide how AI is used, promoting equity and fairness, advancing democracy and teaching digital citizenship.  

“It was really important to get a group of practitioners from all across the country to do this work. And so, what we put out is because AI both has great potential and great peril,” AFT President Randi Weingarten told The Hill.

The federal and some state governments have also been working with teachers to stay on top of the issue, as concerns regarding AI have refused to abate.

“The dissatisfaction that remains is still large. The worries about cheating ... we haven’t really changed that at all,” Factor said. “Teachers need to focus on academic integrity and the purpose for learning.” 

AFT also released what it's calling the AI Educator Brain, in collaboration with New York City Public Schools teacher Sari Beth Rosenberg and EdBrAIn, seeking to offer educators free online resources on the topic. 

“I hesitate to say this, because every time we have a new issue, somebody says, ‘Oh, we should have professional development on it.’ But it's really worth the time, to carve out the time, to have fluency and knowledge and professional support and professional development for AI and the use of AI, it is really worth the time,” Weingarten said.  

Schools face a long road ahead as the technology becomes an integral part of the education process even as it continues to develop rapidly.

“We're just on the very early stages right now from what I've seen — people figuring out what these tools are capable of and how they might shape education,” Trust said.  

The hope is that this upcoming school year will no longer be just a discussion about AI but will also yield concrete plans for a long-term vision. 

“I think we have another year of just experimenting, and figuring out what works, and I'm really hopeful that during that year, organizationally, schools and districts can come up with some goals for themselves around AI,” Britten said. “I'm hoping this year results in that hard, visionary work across all of our states so that teachers can move out of experimentation into some really great sustained ways to kind of change things up.”