The world of education is a dynamic and ever evolving one. It is porous to world events and trends and is required to respond to them purposefully and with agility. This was most evident during the recent pandemic, during which, we observed significant progress in online learning and the innovation that occurred in the digital interface between educator and student as well as the broader professional learning community.

When we telescope into the Moriah College response to Covid and lockdown, it is clear that the College celebrated a trailblazing application of online facility and filtered their practice by ensuring students were anchored in their real world through strict routines and expectations, dress codes, learning protocols and monitored one-on-one discussions with wellbeing professionals, education support personnel, and teachers, to ensure steady progress in student learning, wellbeing and connectivity.

Amidst the aftermath of this life-changing event, one major disruptor that demands our attention is artificial intelligence (AI), inclusive of social media, and its impact on education. This disruptor can be addressed from a range of perspectives. It is currently front and centre in the minds of all educators and parents, and requires an intelligent response which is both prudent and considers the inherent opportunities that can benefit teachers and students.

The immersion of students in the world of knowledge, as accessed via the internet, has unquestionably had a significant impact on education. Learners can default to “Google” information when faced with a learning task or enter an instruction into a chatbot to generate an answer. This occurs alongside the flood of information, opportunity, and stimulus which tends to distract even the most discerning brain. Students acquire snippets of information which are not necessarily accompanied by a deep personal understanding of content. This needs to be managed purposefully so that students receive a thorough education of concepts in their world and are afforded the focus and discipline necessary to acquire new knowledge and skill. Simultaneously, there have been trends in education which culminated in students being expected to acquire core concepts and knowledge in learning areas by osmosis, instead of receiving explicit teaching followed by assessment of student learning. This trend is reminiscent of the impact that whole language had on literacy acquisition in young children. Students used picture cues, memory of words, and their powers of deduction to break the code of reading, instead of a synthetic phonics approach to reading and spelling. The synthetic phonics approach requires a logical, developmentally sound, progressive learning experience which ensures that students are educated on the correct process to decode texts and lift words meaningfully and fluently off a page. Students then practise skills and understandings to ultimately achieve a mastery in reading. Moriah College Primary School has implemented this approach stringently over the past couple of years. By teaching both synthetic phonics and fluency, we are ensuring students possess foundational skills and also a deep understanding of the text’s context and vocabulary. This approach has resulted in improved reading competence and achievement and empowers students to respond intelligently to texts while building a solid foundation for critical thinking.

Moriah College Primary School advocates for a similar logical, developmentally sound, progressive response to Artificial Intelligence and technology and this correlates with changes that have recently occurred in the NSW curriculum. Essentially, the new curriculum requires core concepts to be taught explicitly to students to address the emerging gaps in students’ knowledge of their world and in their acquisition of Literacy and numeracy. Currently, explicit teaching sessions occur throughout the day to provide students with a thorough foundational understanding of core concepts in each Key Learning Area in the curriculum.

The scientific approach to learning provides:

• Opportunities for all to listen without interruption and distraction; an ideal learning environment
• Opportunities for learners to review the learning and retrieve what they have learnt in repeated cycles
• Time to achieve mastery of foundational knowledge
• Opportunities for learners to test out the application of their knowledge and learning

As student knowledge deepens so does the capacity to retrieve and apply it quickly and effectively.

The link between this foundational knowledge and technology and artificial intelligence is that students build up a library of personal information in which they know what “fact” and “correct” looks like. They have this deep understanding as part of their own long-term memory or personal schema and they are able to interact with the internet, social media and aspects of artificial intelligence critically and creatively, so that they don’t automatically assume that every snippet of information that they encounter is the truth.

This approach is significant when responding to AI, the internet and social media, which is ubiquitous in the lives of our students. Instead of demonising AI and the opportunity to reference the internet or “Google the answer”, our students are educated to have a good core foundational knowledge. They have a clear personal understanding of the concept being investigated and, therefore, when they do “Google it” or generate a response from ChatGPT, they are able to evaluate the validity of the information, can question the source and compare it to what they know to be fact. Students are educated to evaluate the information that surrounds them and respond to it with a better-informed lens. This includes their response to social media, which portrays unrealistic life images and questionable social norms. Critical thought and creative application are global competencies required for the workplace of today and tomorrow and this approach ensures that education remains true to its core business whilst addressing the needs of the students to be future ready as they move into tomorrow.

Whilst technology can provide vibrant experiences and opportunities, such as augmented reality, personalised adaptive learning, multi-modal self-expression and global connectivity, we must teach students to be the navigators of their own learning. They must have a framework that ensures they know what “good” or “correct” looks like, and be able to respond to AI and the flood of information on the web. Critical literacy has a whole new meaning in today’s world of education and students need empowerment with the correct foundational knowledge and necessary skills and processes to respond to information and requests for action that come their way. High performance in explicit teaching guarantees the provision of this foundation. This pathway ensures that our young are able to extract the smart benefit from tech which includes valuable information and social connection.

Teachers also benefit from AI and technology. Platforms that capture and filter standardised testing (such a NAPLAN) and school-based testing, as well as wellbeing and behaviour data, help educators with planning and accessing the best learning resources for students.

Importantly, the information that emerges from the data captured, helps us to maintain an awareness of academic progress and student mental health and wellbeing. Students who don’t feel well cannot learn or perform well, and technology has been identified as a major contributor to student anxiety and compromised mental health. Online bullying, exclusion, constant connectivity, social platforms and image sharing, and the unrealistic expectations it places on individuals, impacts wellbeing negatively. A significant amount of time is spent educating students explicitly and proactively on how to self-regulate time spent on technology and their response to it, the recognition of mean-on-purpose behaviour online and how to seek support as the recipient of such conduct, or to intervene as an upstander. Similarly, using age-appropriate education, students receive sexual health education from specialists from the early years and throughout Primary School to ensure the flood of pornographic images or inappropriate content and actions that inadvertently permeates their consciousness, does not emerge as fact or their ultimate truth, and that trustworthy adults are present to guide and support them to make sense of an otherwise confusing world.

This wise use of AI and technology is evolving rapidly in education and will serve to increase teacher wellbeing, increase the time they have to dedicate to teaching and learning, and ensure students receive learning that meets their requirements.

The intelligent response to the disruptor of Artificial Intelligence and all-pervasive technology requires a triangulated approach; the use of evidence-based best practice in education to build student knowledge, the use of grass roots values to maintain good physical and emotional health in children and a celebration of the learning opportunities and efficiencies presented to us in Artificial Intelligence, technology and social media. Hopefully, this will gift our children with Real Intelligence through their thorough foundational knowledge at each stage of their schooling, and the capability to use this knowledge and skill to respond to the complex world in which they live.  

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynda Fisher is the Head of Primary School at Moriah College in Queens Park, NSW.