Artificial Intelligence: educating for the future

Another academic year has just begun.  It does not look much different from the one before – indeed, it is not much different from when I started my education some 50+ years ago.  And it has not fundamentally changed from the compulsory education introduced in the 19^th century.  Till today, children are grouped in classes according to age and receive whole-class instruction from a teacher in charge of a class or a subject.   Although the slates and quill pens have been replaced with updated writing equipment and curriculum has been modernised, the way children are organised and taught have not changed essentially since the beginning of formal education, despite huge technological advancements.

The same does not apply to the world of work.  The way people work today does not resemble the working environment or conditions from the 19^th century.  So how effectively do schools prepare young people for the next stage in their lives?

For many reasons, schools are extremely slow in adapting to new technologies.  The technology already exists – with virtual learning environments and on-line learning tools – to provide personalized-style education to match pupils’ skills, individual academic maturity and ability to ensure the best progress for each child.  This type of learning is not only motivational but it also develops self-regulation needed for achieving greater learning independence in the future.   However, this type of learning is not being successfully applied to benefit all pupils’ education fully.  Despite the overwhelming research evidence (Black et al., 2003; Fullan, 2003; Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). of the benefits of personalized learning to pupils’ achievement and motivation, educators and policy makers have failed to reach a common understanding of what it actually entails and how to embedded it effectively into today’s schooling.  Although attempts at providing personalized learning can be noted in some schools, in the main, learning and achievement are focused on individuals as part of a class/group, rather than on individualized learning pre se.  This is why little has changed over the years with respect to how schools organise learning.

The limited use of modern technology to provide solutions beyond the interaction with some of the curriculum content is hampering young peoples’ individual progress and fails to prepare them adequately for the demands of the modern world.  Some of the attitudes among the educators need to change imminently.  Only recently, looking at an old, decrepit stand-alone keyboard in a south London nursery, where my grand-daughter’s precious early education was just about to be entrusted, I enquired about the use of technology.   I was simply told that it was the settings’ philosophy not to use any IT because children had enough access to computers at home… 

Beyond the use of tablets, interactive boards and other mobile devices, the technology is moving towards the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational settings.  Since the access to the internet and personal computing failed to change fundamentally the organisation of education and the way pupils are essentially taught, the application of AI should change profoundly the way young people will learn in the not-to-distant future.  It will undoubtedly enable pupils to engage with AI-based tuition for a truly personalized learning matched to their individual learning curve. 

“Collaboration with human-computer could help students to learn using new approaches we can’t yet imagine”, explains Professor Emma Brunskill from Stanford University.

Erik Choi, Principal Researcher at Brainly asserts, “Each student can gain access to information that will help them along their unique path of their learning curve.  In the future, that means that a student won’t have to learn the same exact thing at the same exact pace as 30 of their classmates”.

With the popularity of e-readers, the look of some of the school libraries has changed.  However, the use of AI technology should truly revolutionise children’s learning and the way schools are structured within the next 15 years.  It will provide opportunities for each child to learn in a personalized way and to make progress at own pace like no implementation of any assessment policy has been ever able to accomplish.

Traditional schooling is about to change dramatically with the arrival of AI tutors.   This signals the biggest transformation in the way children will be taught and will learn since formal schooling was first introduced some three centuries ago.  The use of teaching robots will enable personalized learning on a large scale, thus ending the traditional teacher-led whole-class instruction, which has been the feature of traditional education for centuries.   These changes will have an impact on the way learning is monitored and assessed, and how and when pupils gain their qualifications.

Tractica, a market intelligence firm, says that “The rapid emergence and adoption of AI techniques are a wakeup call.  AI will transform the technology landscape and touch almost every industry over the next 10 years”.   There are reasons to be excited about the introduction of AI tutors to facilitate and monitor individual education.     

In considering learning for the 21^st century, I have already written about the necessity for the mastery of learning independence to effective preparation for multiple career changes.  The application of AI techniques in education will have an enormous impact on the development of learning independence through the use of effective personalized learning strategies uniquely matched to every learner.    This will revolutionise education as we know it.   And about time!

References

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. and Wiliam, D. (2003) Assessment for

learning: Putting it into practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  New York, NY, Harper Perennial

Fullan, M. (2003). The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. London: SAGE.

Improvement through Self-evaluation

The pivotal role of intrinsic motivation to self-improvement and advancement is well document in cognitive psychology and learning theories. According to Ryan and Deci (2000), this type of motivation is defined as:

…the doing of activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun and challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards.

By contrast, the concept of extrinsic motivation refers to activities, which are performed in order to “attain some separable outcome” (Ryan and Deci, 2000), for example, a certificate or another form of external validation. Research suggests that intrinsic type of motivation is most effective to achieving improved outcomes or personal growth. Therefore creating environments and situations which favour the development of intrinsic motivation are a challenge for us all. With reference to teaching and learning situations, this type of motivation can be achieved when tasks are well matched to the learners’ skills.

Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow theory (1991) and Dweck’s research (2012) focused on ability versus effort, defined in the terms of beliefs as mindsets (fixed and growth), also indicate the crucial role of intrinsic motivation in achieving improved outcomes and personal growth.

School inspections based mainly on external accountability measures depend heavily on extrinsic motivation to bring improvement. In these types of evaluations, the guidance for development is usually communicated through externally articulated recommendations for improvement. It is questionable to what extent these types of evaluations actually benefit organisational improvement. MacBeath et al. (2000) assert that exclusively external systems of school inspections, for example in England and The Netherlands, are mainly driven by control and the need for accountability even if they have an improvement perspective.

In contrast, robust and contextualized self-evaluation arrangements can visibly benefit organisational development by providing the right level of motivation to achieve higher outcomes (intrinsic motivation). Organisational development, where improvement is mainly driven through self-assessment, can be very effective with regard to growth. When fully embedded into an institutional context, the process of self-evaluation becomes almost self-managing in productively meeting institutional objectives and success performance indicators.

Indeed, some of the most successful educational systems in terms of outcomes for young people, for example Finland or Singapore, where school audits are focused only on financial control, are not subjected to external evaluations of their performance.

In England, the most successful schools consistently self-evaluate their own performance against their own challenging and evolving performance indicators. To add greater rigour and challenge to their arrangements, some institutions validate their self-evaluation processes through peer-reviews. These encourage the right level of professional dialogue leading to further improvement.

At this level, success does not happen by chance. At the heart of improving education for all children, is school improvement. The outcomes for all children matter, regardless of their postcode or birth. If school improvement can be achieved through a more effective system of performance evaluation, I think it is worth a try. Perhaps the next stage is to examine the effectiveness of the current inspection framework: to what extent does it directly benefit school improvement in terms of pupils’ outcomes?

On the impact of the inspection regime on school improvement, former Chief Inspector, David Bell, said, “I have always been cautious in saying that inspections cause improvement because, frankly, we do not”.

A Government Select Committee Report in 2010 concluded that “true self-evaluation is at the heart of what a good school does” and that:

Self-evaluation – as an iterative, reflexive and continuous process, embedded in the culture of a school – is a highly effective means for a school to consolidate success and secure improvement across the full range of its activities.

Research literature indicates that external evaluations are most effective when they are focused on improvement and collaboration. Arguably, new inspection arrangements conducted within the spirit of a peer-review process focused on schools’ self-evaluation, is perhaps what is needed to improve education for all. This type of peer-review would focus to a greater degree on the school’s own objectives rather than on the standard pre-determined criteria. Although self-evaluation can play a part in some inspection systems, it is not always a requirement. I feel, that putting self-evaluation at the centre of the inspection process and shifting the focus from external accountability to internal accountability measures against the school’s own objectives, would lead to greater school improvement for all.

Evidence-based data suggest that intrinsic motivation is most conducive to achieving greater learning gains. By analogy, if the same theory is applied to institutional development, for example school improvement, the importance of contextualized self-evaluation and its value in the school evaluation system is perhaps worthy of a longer discussion.


References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, NY, Harper Perennial.
Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindset: How you can fulfill your potential. UK, Robinson.
MacBeath, J. et al (2000). Self-evaluation in European Schools. London, Routledge.
Ryan R.M., Deci E.L. (200). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. Contemp. Educ. Psychol. 25, 54 – 6710.

Building Resilience Early for Later Success: preventing potential mental health issues and poor achievement

As an experienced educationalist, I am a great believer in developing learners through encouraging their effort and providing constructive guidance on future learning. This approach not only helps to develop the right attitudes to learning, leading to improved outcomes, but, with focus on actions, it takes the ‘person’ out of the frame and allows the learners, whatever their abilities, to direct their attention to working on tasks in hand.

All teachers would have encountered learners, including those considered as highly able, who can be reluctant to try for fear of failing. Carol Dweck’s extensive research into the psychology of learning confirms that learners’ attitudes, and especially their willingness to put the effort in, not abilities, are crucial to successful learning and making progress. So how can we ensure that our pupils develop these right attitudes needed for future success?

All young children are keen to explore, discover and learn. During their early development, they make rapid progress and soak up new knowledge like ever expandable sponges. As Dweck says, “You never see an unmotivated baby”. However, as children grow older, they develop different attitudes to learning (“mindsets”), which can have an enormous impact on their future achievement. As adults, we influence children’s thinking and shape their mindsets through our own sets of beliefs and values. In societies that place value on ability over effort, children who feel that they are clever, but are faced with obstacles, can become reluctant learners in order to avoid looking stupid. Such mindsets (“fixed mindsets”), according to research, are formed by adults who tend to focus their praise on the person (“What a clever girl!”), rather than the actions, and this has a negative impact on the child’s future success, especially when that child is faced with some difficulties. Moreover, when these children cannot get by on wits alone, they can develop various avoidance mechanisms and behavioural issues that can lead to more serious mental health problems in the longer term. It is this inability to compete on equal terms with others, who they perceive as no more able than them, and the fear of visible failure that can lead to isolation, depression and poor self-worth.

The demands of the global economy, parental expectations of high achievement to secure first class qualifications for better job prospects, increasing higher education costs and other accountability measures based on sometimes flawed assessment systems all contribute to greater pressures by young people for improving their outcomes. It is therefore crucial for education and health care professionals to take note of evidence-based strategies in order to help young people develop effective self-regulation skills to enable them to cope with temporary failures and to equip them with strategies in overcoming setbacks. Teaching young people the value of effort through praising their actions and trying hard, and preparing them for bugs through challenging tasks, where they have the opportunity to progress at their own level with appropriate level of guidance to experience success, are some of the strategies that can be used to build resilience. The aim of these strategies is to enable these young people to bounce back from difficulties through their own efforts. Since prevention is always preferable to cure, early focus on developing the right mindsets to learning and cultivating the strength of mind through encouraging and praising effort can avert the development of mental health problems by school pupils, and help them to build resilience.

However, building resilience through developing the right attitudes to learning requires consistency of approach by all professionals and greater understanding of developing self-regulation strategies in young children. It is counter-productive and utterly frustrating when I repeatedly hear early years education and health care professionals/therapists lavish their praise on my young grand-daughter in the form of “clever girl”. Developing the growth mindset by instilling the value of effort to future success, through praising effort, not the person, is important to building resilience and determination early, and preventing emotional or behavioural problems later on. Ego-enhancing strategies, however, can result in creating a fixed mindset, where an individual’s full potential can be compromised, and where the lack of adequate effort and running away from challenges can lead to failures and wasted talents.