AI and the Future of Education: Re-evaluating How We Learn

Abstract

Educators agree that secondary education systems are due for an update, if not a full reboot. Our current teaching methods and subjects were created using Victorian Era models of compliance. For thousands of years, humanity educated itself through self-directed play. During the Industrial Revolution, educational theorists had an almost obsessive interest in moving children from the classroom to factory floor. Economist Joel Mokyr explains that education during the industrial period had to do with teaching workers how “to follow orders, to respect the space and property rights of others, be punctual, docile, and sober”. In the early 20th century, behaviourist psychology reinforced factory practices for the supervision and management of human intelligence. Today, artificial generative intelligence has disrupted behaviourist curriculum development in schools. Chat GPT has pushed teachers to refine their approaches to plagiarism, but this technology has also generated fascinating new questions about common curriculum and accepted teaching practice. New technology can be used to perpetuate a parasitic approach to human intelligence, but it also prompts educators to reevaluate their core values. If a robot can ace the Turing test of high school, maybe high school is doing something wrong. Generative AI has encouraged educators to become more creative, more individuated, and more flexible. To survive the relevance test of an uncertain future, education itself is going to have to embrace new models for academic success.

Presenters

April Pawar
Head of Humanities, TASIS England, United Kingdom

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Educational Studies

KEYWORDS

Education, AI, Classroom Learning, Education, Theories of Attention, Philosophy