A recent meeting with the University of Glasgow, along with my involvement in the ISC Digital Conference as well as in the Edufuturists Uprising event got me thinking about education in general. I have repeatedly commented on the need for us to refocus on what is most important, rather than continuing our approach of adding additional tasks, guidelines and frameworks for teachers to use. Yes, each task, framework of guideline might be well intentioned but it also adds complexity and generally adds to teachers workloads, at a time where workload is already a noted issue, and to their cognitive load in and out of the classroom.
Efficiency and AI
I have previously written my concerns regarding the efficiency narrative which seems to surround AI use by teachers. My concern has largely been around the fact that any time gains which AI may bring, will simply allow some new task or requirement to be introduced thereby filling this newly available time and bringing us right back to where we are today when it comes to workload. I also note there is plenty of research to show our workload tends to expand to fill the available time we have.Prof Miles Berry, however, at the ISC Conference presented another concern in his question as to whether we want teachers to be “more efficient” or whether we would prefer them to be “better” teachers. It seems clear that doing more of the same, doing things quicker isn’t what we want, and that clearly our preference should be on doing things better.
Make things better / more complex
This got me thinking about all the various things which I have seen introduced in education reflecting on lesson planning in particular. When I trained in the mid 90s, qualifying in the late 90s, a lesson plan was pretty simple. But as time advanced we added more steps, adding the need for differentiation, consideration of EAL and SEND, WALF and WILF and much more. I look at teaching today and there is so much to consider and think about that surely it must detract from the art of teaching, and I do consider teaching to be an artform.
This may be the issue, and was something Prof Berry referred to; whether teaching was a profession or craft. When I trained the discussion focussed on teaching as a profession in that it conferred an element of professional judgement and autonomy, rather than a trade where you just completed your given tasks. My view on this has changed; I don’t think teaching now carries the prestige and respect of a profession however I still see the importance and value in the autonomy and in the ability to be creative, so maybe rather than a professional or trade, teaching is more like a craft as Prof Berry suggested.
But aside from that, over time we have been seeking to better understand what good teaching looks like, breaking it down into its component parts and then mandating that teachers should do each of these parts, as a requirement of every lesson or at least most lessons. Considering machine automation, being able to break a task down into its component parts makes it more automatable. It becomes almost mechanical in nature. But teaching is much more than this, involving the interactions of teachers and students, the interplay of discussion, group work, the exploring of knowledge and skills, but all within a social context. Great teaching is more than the sum of its parts. Maybe our efforts to break teaching down into automatable, mechanical chunks is causing us to lose something from great teaching. Maybe we lose some of the magic, some of the dynamic, unexpected and unpredictable elements of a classroom. Maybe we lose some of the failures and mistakes, which we as humans learn so much from.
Safety and reliability or risk and memorable?
I wonder if we have been exchanging the creativity and dynamism of past educational experience, for more scalable and predictable experiences; When I consider my memory and what I remember most, my fondest memories, they tend to be the things which have been unexpected or new, rather than those which are safe, repeated and predictable.
The challenge in all of this is that if we move back towards teaching as an art, as a craft and we trust in teachers and allow the autonomy they once had, there is a risk that some teaching may be poor, albeit I suspect some teaching will be amazing. Are we willing to take the risk? Is an amazing life long memory of a lesson for 1 student equal in value to a poor experience by another student?I find this in itself interesting in that we want resilient students, students that can pick themselves up, learn and grow from where things go wrong. I wonder if the education system as a whole, in the UK, needs to consider this? Maybe in seeking to avoid things going wrong we have also lost something important? And surely there are ways to put some guardrails in place such that autonomy can be restored but with insurance in place to address where teaching isn’t quite up to scratch?
As schools and the world wrestle with AI and automation, have we been slowly trying to boil teaching down to its component parts and to mandate people do the same things, which will help with efficiency and reliable safe outcomes? And in doing so are we making it easier for us to use of AI and have AI replace us in some tasks such as lesson content generation, marking, etc? But maybe, in a world of AI, the best learning needs to be much more messy and much more human. Being messy isn’t easily automated and I am not sure it should be. There is a balance to be reached in all of this, but I suspect the key is needing to step back and look at education broadly. I suspect this is easier said than done.
Technology and Learning